Hey Anno Community,
we know that many of you have been patiently waiting for more news on our next major DLC, “Land of Lions”. We also know that we had previously promised to have more information on this feature-packed content in September. Unfortunately, due to some additional feedback we have been working to implement, we won’t be able to honor that promise, and there will be no news from Enbesa this month. On the bright side, we will not only release “Land of Lions” itself in October but are also working on several DevBlogs to give you an in-depth look into Anno 1800’s biggest DLC prior to release.
Enjoy the “City Lights”
Speaking of releases- another frequently asked question was whether the runner-up from our Cosmetic DLC vote, the “Bustling City Life Pack”, would make its way into your cities in the future. We are happy to say that the answer is “Yes!”, with a small “but…” attached. While the concept is very much the same many of you voted for earlier this year (vending booths, playgrounds and other things you will find in daily city life), the pack has undergone a name change to “City Lights Pack”, to account for the new streetlamps! This latest Cosmetic DLC will be coming to Anno 1800 later this year, after the release of “Land of Lions”.
We are looking forward to sharing much more about both DLCs with you all in the weeks to come!
Hey Anno Community,
Today we are looking for some intrepid adventurers to join us aboard the first ships traveling to Enbesa, the “Land of Lions” as part of our next Technical Test! Similar to what we did last year for “The Passage”, this Technical Test will over the course of several weeks invite a number of Anno Union community members to play our biggest DLC early, and to help us find issues and problems.
Keep in mind that you will be playing new content in an early work-in-progress state (as “Land of Lions” is scheduled for Fall 2020), so a certain tolerance for dealing with bugs and technical problems is highly recommended. Testers will have access to a closed forum where they can share their experiences and feedback with members of the Anno Dev Team, to ensure that we can deliver an amazing DLC and end to Season 2 (plus the associated free Game Update of course, which will also have many quality-of-life improvements players have been asking for).
Please be aware that due to the early state of the new content, the Technical Test will be under a strict NDA, and participants will not be allowed to share information, images or videos from the test outside the closed forum. We are currently planning to start the “Land of Lions” Technical Test in mid-July.
and welcome to the all-new Anno Union, your #1 source for any news and updates on Ubisoft’s series of strategy games- straight from the dev team here in Mainz!
When we first launched the original Anno Union alongside Anno 1800’s announcement at gamescom 2017, we did not quite know what to expect. We still remember that after we finished our first press demo of the game, everyone immediately grabbed their phones to see if we already had some comments on our new website. Turns out there were: with several hundred comments during that first week, the Anno Union was immediately off to an incredible (and slightly intimidating) start. Since that hot August day, the Anno team and community have been equally busy, as we published close to 500 items on the Anno Union, which you discussed in almost 20k comments! Thanks to all of your feedback and input, we not only completely reworked the New World into the iteration you see in the game today, but also added features like co-op, statistics or the popular day-and-night cycle. And that’s just a few examples of the many ways the community has shaped the development of the game. All of which contributed to making Anno 1800 the fastest-selling game in the series’ 22-year history!
As mentioned above, we initially did not know what to expect from the Anno Union, and how the community would react to it. As a result, it was all focused on the “here and now” of Anno 1800’s development, with the layout only being intended to support one game.
Going forward, we want the Anno Union to be better suited to supporting the full franchise, starting with the release of the four History Edition version of Anno 1602, 1503, 1701 and 1404 last week. To support a wider range of games and help discoverability, we have put an emphasis on categories and tags, making it easier for you to find the blogs and release notes you want. The entire Union should also be much faster and responsive, in addition to its design.
Keep in mind that this is just day 1 of the journey, and the Anno Union idea has always been about working alongside our community to improve things. You will initially notice some funkiness as older blogs haven’t all been properly tagged yet (did we mention we have almost 500 already?) , and some things may not be fully adapted to the new design and layout yet. Despite this, we wanted to already launch the new version of the Union in preparation of upcoming Game Updates for the History Edition releases, and to be able to incorporate your feedback as we fine-tune things over the coming weeks.
It’s been an amazing journey over the past three years, and we are very excited to have you all with us- hopefully for many years to come!
Welcome to the fourth and final part of our series of DevBlogs covering the four classic Anno games included in the upcoming Anno History Collection. This time, we will cover perennial fan-favorite Anno 1404. If you did not get a chance to check out our previous three blogs yet, we would encourage you to do so before reading on (especially the first one):
As outlined before, our priority with this collection and the four games included (the History Editions of Anno 1602, 1503, 1701 and 1404) was to maintain the classic gameplay that we have all grown to love over the past two decades, while ensuring that playing these games on your current PCs is smooth and hassle-free. This is of course also true for Anno 1404 History Edition:
The game has been completely ported to be 64-bit only, meaning it can now take full advantage of the RAM in your PC, which helps improve performance and stability. This is especially relevant for Anno 1404, as we will discuss in a moment.
An idyllic countryside scene in Anno 1404 History Edition
As with the other three games, Anno 1404 HE will support screen resolutions all the way up to stunning 4k, with the game automatically scaling the user interface to remain comfortably playable even at such a high resolution.
Improved and enhanced multiplayer functionality via Uplay. In addition to the tried and true multiplayer setup you are used to, there will also be a quickmatch function and desync recovery like the one seen in Anno 1800.
Anno 1404: One for the ages
As we mentioned last week, Anno 1701 was a game of many firsts. Not only did it mark the franchise’s first foray into full 3D gameplay, but it was also the first Anno game from the current team at Ubisoft Mainz (née Related Designs). Having very successfully assumed the mantle of Anno stewards, the team set out to work on the “Empire” to their initial “New Hope”. When the game eventually set sail in Summer of 2009, it immediately captivated the imagination of players with its lovingly detailed worlds, allowing players to create picturesque renaissance cities that were bustling with life. Having proven their mastery of the classic Anno formula with 1701, Related Designs felt ready to introduce some big new features with 1404, many of which (or at least their influence) are still evident a decade later in Anno 1800.
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The most eye-catching new element was of course the Orient as a second new playable culture in addition to the European-inspired occident. Having an architecturally, culturally and geographically distinct second part of the game, with two separate residential tiers as well as new production chains and goods was not only mind-blowing to players of Anno 1404, but will also sound familiar to avid industrialists who have been spending time in 1800’s New World or the Passage. The Orient even had its own major building project with the Sultan’s mosque (as a counterpart to the Occident’s Imperial Cathedral), and special regional gameplay with the Norias. These machines came in two variations and were used, much as in the real world, to help water the land, allowing players to construct farms in the otherwise arid land. Rumor has it that you may soon see a new spin on this established concept when it is time to travel to the “Land of Lions” in the last DLC of Anno 1800’s Season 2 this fall. The game also put a bigger emphasis on building a living world for players to get lost in with its ensemble of beloved AI characters such as the benevolent Lord Northburgh and his wise oriental counterpart Grand Vizier Al Zahir, the despicable Cardinal Lucius or the fan- and meme-favorite Leif Jorgensen, as well as a huge selection of quests to further flesh them out. As Anno tradition at the time demanded, the game received a popular expansion the following year, called “Venice” (one of the rare references to a real country or city in the otherwise fictional Anno series). The expansion not only added the highly anticipated multiplayer mode, but also some impactful new features. Chief among them was the espionage system, which gave players some interesting ways to mess with their opponents in covert ways, and the assembly, which could be used to buy out other islands (similarly to Anno 1800’s island shares).
Norias can be used to make the orient bloom
Having been well received before, the “Venice” expansion raised Anno 1404 to the level of an all-time city-building classic, and the game has generally been considered the franchise’s high-water mark prior to Anno 1800. It is certainly no coincidence that the next two Anno games would explore futuristic new frontiers instead of continuing to explore the middle-ages. It would be a full decade between Anno 1404’s release, and Anno’s return to a historically inspired setting with 1800 in 2019.
With Anno 1404 still looking great and playing just as well, we focused our efforts for the History Edition on making the multiplayer work properly via Uplay (as discussed above), and the late game crash that has been plaguing some players for years. First, let us clear up a misunderstanding we have seen surface a few times since the announcement of the History Edition: the late game crashes in Anno 1404 are not the result of a “bug” in the game, but a consequence of the inherent inability of 32-bit software to address more than 4GB of RAM in your PC. In other words: once your empire reaches a certain magnitude, the game will run out of usable RAM, which will lead to a crash. It is also worth pointing out our general philosophy for Anno, as we do not put hard limits on buildings or units the way many other strategy games do. Instead our approach was always that you can keep building until you max out your hardware or run of out of space in the game world, and we are often deeply impressed by resourceful players finding some tricks to cram just a few hundred more citizens into their cities (you are very lucky that there are no building safety inspectors in Anno!). In the case of Anno 1404, the game unfortunately came out at a time when 32-bit software and operating systems were still the standard, and so players had to contend with the limits of their hard- and software at the time. With the 64-bit version that is the History Edition, the issue of the game running out of Ram will be one of the past, and you should be able to reach new levels of building uninterrupted. Let the citizen-cramming begin! Please note however that due to this change, the system requirements of all History Edition games are much higher than for the original games (though still very modest compared to today’s games, of course). The system requirements for the Anno History Collection are:
Anno 1404 HE will of course also have save game compatibility, meaning that you will be able to take your old save games and pick up playing where you last stopped.
You will also be able to create new custom scenarios or to import and play old scenarios created with the editing tools. One small caveat though: We will not be bringing back the old “Gate to the World” portal for scenario sharing, though there are of course plenty of ways to share your scenarios with other players these days.
Finally, languages. Anno 1404 History Edition will support English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Czech, Polish, and Russian languages.
Bonus Content
As mentioned in the Anno 1602 HE blog, we have asked Dynamedion to compose a new History Edition Suite encompassing the main themes of all four games, which you can of course also enjoy with Anno 1404 HE, alongside the rest of the game’s digital soundtrack. Beyond that, buyers of this version can look forward to a special commemorative Anno 1404 wallpaper, and a company logo for use in Anno 1800. Keep in mind that anyone who buys the full Anno History Collection on Uplay will also get an additional fifth company logo, plus a special ornament for use in Anno 1800.
And with that, our series of DevBlogs/ retrospectives comes to an end. All that is left for us to do is to share a list of all versions and where to buy them next week, before the Anno History Edition launches globally on June 25! Stay safe and stay building!
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Welcome to the third part of our series of DevBlogs covering the four classic Anno games included in the upcoming Anno History Collection. This time, we will cover Anno 1503, and a black mark on the Anno franchise that we are incredibly happy to finally erase after 18 years! If you did not get a chance to check out our two previous blogs yet, we would encourage you to do so before reading on (especially the first one):
As outlined before, our priority with this collection and the four games included (the History Editions of Anno 1602, 1503, 1701 and 1404) was to maintain the classic gameplay that we have all grown to love over the past two decades, while ensuring that playing these games on your current PCs is smooth and hassle-free. This is of course also true for Anno 1503 History Edition:
The game has been completely ported to be 64-bit only, meaning it can now take full advantage of the RAM in your PC, which helps improve performance and stability.
An Anno 1503 city in its full 4k glory (low UI scaling)
As with the other three games, Anno 1503 HE will support screen resolutions all the way up to stunning 4k. As with Anno 1602 HE, you will be able to manually select a UI scale to ensure that the UI remains comfortable to use even at 4k.
“Now hold on a minute”, we can hear you shout, “what about the improved multiplayer?”. Well…why don’t you grab a cold (or warm) drink of your choice, get comfortable, and we dive into another history lesson together?
Anno 1503: A great sequel with a glaring omission
While small Austrian developer MAX Design had developed several decently successful games like Oldtimer before, nothing could have prepared them for the meteoric success of Anno 1602 when they first released it in Spring 1998. Between rave reviews and stellar sales in German-speaking markets, Anno did right out of the gate become a heavy hitter in the then-burgeoning PC strategy market. Of course, with great success comes great expectations, so when it was time for the team to plot a course for their next game, they had to do so with the newfound burden of developing a sequel to Germany’s best-selling PC game of the year.
With that in mind, it should not be too surprising that Anno 1503’s development took unusually long for its time, coming out more than four years later in Fall 2002. When it finally did come out, it not only offered a plethora of new content (such as several different biomes and hundreds of building models), but also some big shake-ups to 1602’s tried-and-true gameplay.
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For example, rulers in Anno 1503 could no longer rely on taxes from their citizenry to fill their coffers. Instead, the game followed a more mercantile setup where players had to build market stalls where they sold wares to residents to finance their empire. While some of these changes proved highly controversial, no one could accuse MAX Design of playing to safe with their 1602 follow-up! More impactful changes that first made their way into the series were different cultures such as Venetians or Inuit and the fact that some traders now had their own island rather than just a periodically visiting ship.
While the execution of course varies, you can still see many of these ideas living on in Anno 1800, with our geographically varied sessions and traders like Madame Kahina or the Inuit in “The Passage”. And of course, Anno 1503 stayed true to the form established with 1602 by being a stunningly beautiful game, with highly detailed 2D graphics that were filled with small details that brought the world to life. Much like its predecessor, the game also became an instant success in Germany, immediately topping the charts and becoming one of the biggest hits of the year. In other words, everything could have been perfect for MAX Design, Sunflowers and Anno 1503… if not for that pesky multiplayer mode.
1503 managed to be even more detailed than Anno 1602
During development, it was promised that Anno 1503 would come with a multiplayer mode that would allow players to compete for resources as they built their empires. However, it turned out that with this promise the companies involved may have bitten off more than they could chew, as they struggled throughout development to get the multiplayer mode to be stable with the amount of data being sent back and forth between players. Come release, players found that the “Multiplayer” button in the main menu was greyed out, with a promise of it coming later down the road as a free update. Weeks became months, and when even the game’s expansion pack “Treasures, Monsters & Pirates” (which is of course part of the History Edition) was released without the promised multiplayer, Sunflowers had a proper scandal on its hands.
In the end, it was announced that work on the multiplayer mode was scrapped roughly 1 ½ years after Anno 1503’s release, bringing the inglorious saga to a sad ending. Despite all the work and even a beta test, the team were unable to reach the level of performance and stability required to release the multiplayer mode officially, instead opting to remove the previously greyed-out button from the menu. The resourceful Anno community eventually made the mode available via mods and fan patches, but the black mark of the long-promised and ultimately cancelled multiplayer mode has stuck with the game and the Anno series ever since, to the point where people still brought it up when Anno 1800 was announced more than a decade later by a completely different developer and publisher!
When we started talking about doing the Anno History Collection, this quickly became the crucial point- could we finally erase the black mark and officially release the Anno 1503 multiplayer mode after all these years? If not, there would be no point in doing this collection, so the first step for our programmers was to dive into the old source code to see if we had everything needed. Once we managed to get it running and performing well, we knew that we could offer long-time Anno fans special surprise with the History Collection.
As with the other games, Anno 1503 History Edition’s mode will be powered by Uplay and have not only all the originally envisioned features, but also a quickmatch mode and desync recovery. In addition, we even created all-new content in the form of three additional multiplayer scenarios, to round out the two from the original developers!
Other improvements to Anno 1503 History Edition include:
Three new optional mouse cursors to pick from in addition to the original style
Borderless Window mode, in addition to Fullscreen and Windowed
Optional multi-placement of residential buildings, to make painting down new housing for your citizens quick and painless
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Optional mouse-scrolling for smoother movement across the map
We fixed a graphical glitch that would appear on coastlines; as with the other improvements, this is entirely optional, in case you prefer to see how things looked back in the day
All these improvements can be select from a new options menu, which also offers an overview of all hotkey bindings.
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Finally, we fixed an old issue that put a hard limit on the number of available units in the game(the so-called “FIG value), which would result in a crash once that number was reached. That means that record builders will no longer be limited by this issue and can once again start the race for new citizen records!
The 1503 HE will of course also have save game compatibility, meaning that you will be able to take your old save games and pick up playing where you last stopped.
There is some bad news, however. We sadly will not be releasing an updated version of the Anno 1503 editor, as it was only released in German previously, and issues with the source code prevent us from localizing it. You can however still use scenarios that were made in the original editor in the History Edition. Also, three tracks from the original game’s soundtrack will not be coming back, due to licensing reasons.
Finally, languages. Anno 1503 History Edition will support English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Dutch languages.
1503 was the first game to introduce different biomes into the Anno series
Bonus Content
As mentioned in the Anno 1602 HE blog, we have asked Dynamedion to compose a new History Edition Suite encompassing the main themes of all four games, which you can of course also enjoy with Anno 1503 HE, alongside the rest of the digital soundtrack. Beyond that, buyers of this version can look forward to a special commemorative Anno 1503 wallpaper, and a company logo for use in Anno 1800. Keep in mind that anyone who buys the full Anno History Collection on Uplay will also get an additional fifth company logo, plus a special ornament for use in Anno 1800.
And that is it for today! Let us know about your favorite Anno 1503 memories in the comments and join us soon for our look at the History Editions crown jewel, Anno 1404.
Welcome back to part two of our in-depth look at the games included in this month’s Anno History Collection. Today we want to tackle Anno 1701, which is a special game to the team in many ways. But before we get into the specifics of 1701, let us recap our general approach to the Anno History Collection and the improvements that have been made across the board on all the games. Should you have missed our first blog on Anno 1602 History Edition, we would encourage you to give that a read first.
Classic gameplay on modern PCs
As outlined before, our priority with this collection and the four games included (History Editions of Anno 1602, 1503, 1701 and 1404) was to maintain the classic gameplay that we have all grown to love over the past two decades, while ensuring that playing these games on your current PCs is smooth and hassle-free. This is of course also true for Anno 1701 History Edition:
The game has been completely ported to be 64-bit only, meaning it can now take full advantage of the RAM in your PC, which helps improve performance and stability.
Anno 1701 History Edition making the lightning strike twice
Online multiplayer is back! Anno 1701 originally used the since deprecated Gamespy middleware, which means that playing the game online has not been easily possible for years. This History Edition will allow you to play via Uplay, with all the previously available options of classic Anno 1701 multiplayer coming back. In addition, there will be an option for quickmatches, and desync recovery (the error that occurs when the game state between the participating players is no longer synchronized), like what is offered in Anno 1800.
Higher resolutions: As with the other three games, Anno 1701 HE will support screen resolutions all the way up to stunning 4k. And of course, the UI will automatically adapt to your chosen resolution to make sure that the game remains easy to play, no matter if you chose 4k or keep it old-school at 1024×768.
Anno 1701: A game of many firsts
As mentioned above, Anno 1701 holds a special place, for two closely intertwined reasons: not only was it the first Anno game to be in full 3D, but also the first one to be made by the team that is today known as Ubisoft Mainz (that’s us!). Time for a little history lesson!
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As you may know, the first two Anno games were developed by a small Austrian developer called MAX Design, for their publisher Sunflowers. While both Anno 1602 and 1503 were tremendously successful, the way the industry was going was clear, with most other major strategy game franchises of the day making the jump to 3D graphics. This proved to be an issue, with the tiny MAX Design team being unprepared for the challenges of 3D development. And being based in the small town of Schladming, which is best known for winter sports, recruiting outside talent was not an easy solution either. At the same time, publisher Sunflowers had started conversations with a German developer called Related Designs about a potential collaboration on a military-focused realtime-strategy game codenamed “Anno Wars”.
Eventually, things came to a head between MAX and Sunflowers, with the latter instead opting to contract Related Designs to develop the next full Anno game. This would prove to be a major turning point for the Mainz-based studio, which had previously found some success with its 3D real-time titles Castle Strike and No Man’s Land. If this was a fairytale, we would be ending this history lesson with “…and they lived happily ever after”, but more accurately we should say “while they changed their name from Related Designs to Ubisoft Blue Byte and eventually Ubisoft Mainz, they happily developed all main Anno games ever since”.
So there you have it- Anno 1701 not only brought a beloved mix of city-building, trade, discovery, and warfare into the 3D dimension, but was also the first game from the same core team that is still hard at work on Anno more than 15 years later! In fact, if you were to compare the credits of Anno 1701 and 1800, you might notice that more than a dozen people from then are part of the Anno 1800 team, with even more working on other projects inside the Ubisoft Mainz studio. Finally, this was also the first Anno game to make use of the musical talents of Dynamedion for its soundtrack, with the studio becoming our partner for Anno music ever since.
While the switch to incredibly detailed 3D graphics has of course been the most eye-catching change to the previous games, 1701 also had some noticeable gameplay changes, like the central town square – with its visual feedback showing the happiness of your citizens, and the ability to set individual taxes for each residential tier. Avid Anno 1800 players may recognize how these concepts evolved into riots and tiered workforce in our latest title! As was tradition, Anno 1701 also received an expansion roughly a year after its original 2006 release, with the most notable addition of “The Sunken Dragon” being the single-player campaign that the core game had been missing. All expansion content is of course included in the History Edition as well.
“The Sunken Dragon” immerses players in an Asia-inspired setting
Building upon a classic
Here is what we are doing for the History Edition of Anno 1701:
Higher camera zoom: Zoom out further than ever before to get a better look at your sprawling empire (please note that this has to be optionally enabled by changing the game’s Engine.ini file)
Multi-placement of residential buildings: As with Anno 1800, you can now drag and drop as many residential buildings as you want (or your resources allow for) at a time
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Multiscreen support: Extremely rare when the game first released, multi-screen setups are commonplace these days, and now you can make full use of their screens. Anno 1701 History Edition goes even one step further by supporting three different UI styles for multiscreen setups: Compact UI, Split UI or Stretched UI. With these presets, any player is sure to find a style that meets their personal preferences!
Smoother scrolling when moving the camera
Borderless Window mode to make it easier to stream the game online
Anno 1701 History Edition is of course compatible with your existing save games, so you can keep playing right where you left off back when 1701 came out! This compatibility also extends to user created scenarios, as we are also shipping the updated 1701 World Editor with the game.
Finally, Anno 1701 History Edition will be available in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Czech, Polish, and Hungarian.
A typical city in Anno 1701 History Edition
Bonus Content
As mentioned in the Anno 1602 HE blog, we have asked Dynamedion to compose a new History Edition Suite encompassing the main themes of all four games, which you can of course also enjoy with Anno 1701, alongside the rest of the digital soundtrack. Beyond that, buyers of this version can look forward to a special commemorative Anno 1701 wallpaper, and a company logo for use in Anno 1800. Keep in mind that anyone who buys the full Anno History Collection on Uplay will also get an additional fifth company logo, plus a special ornament for use in Anno 1800.
And that is it for today! Let us know about your favorite Anno 1701 memories in the comments and join us next week as we take a look at Anno 1503 History Edition, and the tale of the long-lost multiplayer mode!
Last month we announced the release of the Anno History Collection arriving June 25, which will update the beloved first four games in the Anno series to take better advantage of modern PCs, while maintaining the gameplay we all know and love. As promised at the announcement, we will have a separate blog post for each of the games to not only talk about the new improvements, but also about the games and their place in Anno history themselves. As this is the first blog, we will take this opportunity to talk a bit about the History Collection in general, before diving right into Anno 1602 History Edition!
Our goals for the History Collection
The first question that came to many minds upon our announcement was of course “why?”, so let us start with that. As you know, Anno 1800 has been a huge success for the team, becoming the fastest-selling Anno game right out of the gate, and attracting more than a million players within its first nine months on the market. Many of these players have been discovering the Anno series for the first time with 1800, and we have been seeing more and more questions about the older games. Of course, it is also possible that many of our international players have played an Anno game in the past, and simply did not realize! You see, the games industry was quite different one or two decades ago.
In the case of Anno, the history in non-German-speaking markets has been a curious one. The first four games that are part of the collection all had different publishers and distribution partners in different countries, which also resulted in all of them having different names in various regions! Turns out that the 1602 A.D. or Dawn of Discovery games you played in your youth were Anno games! In fact, it was not until the series took a trip into the future with Anno 2070 that the series’ name would be used globally. In this sense, the collection presents a good way to get our entire community on the same page. You may have also noticed that the artworks for the History Editions of the games have new logos that are closer in style to Anno 1800’s, unifying the branding of the series going forward to make sure that you will immediately recognize anything Anno when you see it (don’t worry- we went with the classic logos inside the games for nostalgia’s sake!).
A typical Anno 1602 city (low UI scaling)
Of course, that is only part of our reasoning- the much more important aspect is enabling players to enjoy these games without issues and tinkering on their modern PCs and operating systems. Both the gaming industry and technology have undergone some huge changes since these games first saw the light of day (keep in mind that even Anno 1404 as the newest of these titles is more than a decade old), which have led to some of these games being harder to play on current PCs and their multiplayer becoming inaccessible. So, when we started discussing the possibility of releasing such a collection, we defined three key goals:
Make them easy to run well on modern PCs. No more fiddling with legacy Windows settings or struggling with hard- and software incompatibilities!
Bring back multiplayer and make it easy to use. Each of the old games used a different multiplayer setup, using either deprecated internal solutions or middleware that no longer exists such as Gamespy.
Above all else, we wanted to maintain the gameplay the community loves, while seeing if we can make some smaller quality of life changes that make playing these games a smoother experience.
Let us go through these step by step!
Porting all games to 64-bit
Given that they were released between 11 and 22 years ago, all the older Anno games were released as 32-bit software (whereas Anno 2205 or 1800 are 64-bit software only). While that was normal at the time (with 64-bit operating systems and processors only becoming widely used much later), it also comes with some inherent problems that the games share with all 32-bit software. The most obvious being the fact that 32-bit software can only address 4GB of RAM in your system, due to a hard limit on the number of RAM bytes the software can address. In other words- no matter how much RAM you may have in your modern PC, these old games can only use less than 4GB of it.
With this in mind, it was a priority for us to port the games to 64-bit, to make sure your growing empires can make full use of all your available resources. You will also note other general improvements to performance and stability, making playing these classics all-around much smoother (this is especially true for the oldest games, Anno 1602 and 1503).
The other big topic on the tech side was of course the graphics, seeing how a resolution of 1024×768 would have already been opulent beyond belief when Anno 1602 first came out. Here we again want to strike a balance between preserving beloved games and making playing them a smooth experience in 2020 and beyond. That is why we have kept all the original game assets intact but have changed the games to properly support widescreen formats and resolutions all the way up to 4k. And yes, full 4k support of course means that the UI will scale with the higher resolution to make sure that you can comfortably play the game! In the case of Anno 1602, you will have the option to freely choose between three different UI sizes at any time during the game.
Anno 1602 History Edition in all its 4k glory, with high UI scaling
Bringing back and improving multiplayer functionality
As mentioned above, time has not been kind to the multiplayer functionality of the classic Anno games, forcing many of them offline due to their previously used infrastructure and middleware becoming outdated or even deprecated. To ensure that you can relive your memories of past battles and will be able to play all four games for years to come, we have ported all of their multiplayer functionality to Uplay, with a feature set similar to what we use for Anno 1800. Regarding graphics, we are ensuring that all the previously available gameplay options and features stay the same, but are in addition to custom lobbies, including matchmaking for quickmatches. In the case of a de-sync (game state of clients differs), we have introduced a comfortable recovery to reduce the impact of such incidents to a minimum (except for 1602 since it uses a different synchronization technique).
With the technical jargon out of the way, let’s talk Anno 1602!
Placing the cornerstone with Anno 1602
The question what makes Anno 1602 special is of course an easy one to answer: Being the first game in the series, there would have not been an Anno 1503, 1404 or 1800 if Anno 1602 had not been an instant hit, and gone on to become one of the most successful PC games ever in Germany. Originally released in Spring 1998 by Austrian developer MAX Design and German publisher Sunflowers, the game immediately became a major contender in the then-crowded city-building genre. Even then, all the hallmarks of Anno were already in evidence: gamers enjoyed highly detailed 2D graphics as they tried to satisfy their citizens’ increasing demands, unlocking ever more complex production chains in the process.
As with all classic Anno games, 1602 would eventually get an expansion called “New Islands, New Adventures”, which not only added dozens of new scenarios and islands, but also improvements to the core gameplay. All this content is of course also part of the History Edition release.
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As mentioned, it was crucial for us to preserve this classic gameplay, so new players can see how Anno started out. To this end, we are introducing a few quality-of-life improvements, which are entirely optional (so if you want to play with just one mouse button, be our guest!). These improvements are:
Modern controls: Anno 1602 used a very retro control scheme, employing just the left mouse button for all actions. We have implemented the option to switch to modern Anno controls, using the right mouse button for navigation and to order your ships.
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To go alongside that, there is also a new mouse cursor to replace the classic Windows-esque look
You can now use the mouse wheel for zooming (this one is a permanent change). Fun fact- back then, many mice did not even have mouse wheels!
Borderless window mode, making both streaming and task-switching to look up your favorite guides more convenient. This is of course in addition to full-screen and windowed modes.
Given their extremely low resolution, you can now opt to have the beloved cutscenes that play when you find a new resource etc. show in the minimap window instead, allowing you to keep building while you indulge in the nostalgia
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We have also implemented a new in-game menu where you can change these settings at any time and added a new overview screen of all the keyboard shortcuts.
Another especially important feature is save game compatibility, allowing you to take your old saves from previous versions of the game, and to keep building those empires in this History Edition! Even better, this support also extends to user-generated content! Not only have we updated the Anno 1602 Editor to work with the new enhancements, but you will also be able to load up any previously generated user scenarios!
Finally, we need to address languages, with the Anno 1602 History Edition supporting the following languages: English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, and Polish.
With these improvements, we hope to strike an ideal balance between presenting classic gameplay as it was intended by its original developer, while giving players some optional improvements to make playing Anno 1602 easier than ever for a modern audience.
Bonus Content
Finally, we want to throw in some additional goodies to thank you all for your support of Anno over the years. To this end, we have asked our friends at Dynamedion (the masterminds behind Anno 1800’s orchestral soundtrack) to arrange a new History Collection Suite combining elements of all four games’ main themes, which has been added to the game’s playlist. Other digital bonus content includes the Anno 1602 soundtrack, a special new wallpaper commemorating the game, and a new 1602-themed company logo for use in Anno 1800. Let us know if you have any additional questions about the Anno 1602 History Edition and see you soon for a look at Anno 1701!
today we are very excited to share the announcement of the upcoming Anno History Collection with you all. With this collection, we are updating the first four Anno games (1602, 1503, 1701 and 1404) to take advantage of modern PCs, while keeping the classic gameplay we all know and love. Among the more notable improvements to all four games are:
All games being ported to 64-bit to improve performance and stability (say goodbye to Anno 1404 running out of memory)
Support for new resolutions all the way up to 4k, making your empires look better than ever before
Improved multiplayer, with all games now running through Uplay, with comfort features such as quickmatch and desync recovery (as seen in Anno 1800). And yes… ANNO 1503 MULTIPLAYER IS OFFICIALLY HERE!
Full save game compatibility, so we hope you have held on to those beloved saves from years past
Of course, all games include their expansions, as well as any other official content that may have been released over the years
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So how and where will you be able to get your hands on these releases?
Anno History Collection – 39,99€/$
Includes the History Editions of Anno 1602, 1503, 1701 and 1404, as well as their respective expansions. The collection pack will be exclusively available on Uplay, at a special price of 39,99€/$. As a bonus, it will also include an exclusive new ornament celebrating these classic games and five new company logos for Anno 1800 (one for each game, plus one that is exclusive to the collection).
This commemorative Anno 1800 ornament is exclusively available with the History Collection on Uplay
Anno 1602 History Edition – 9,99€/$
Includes the updated version of Anno 1602 and the “New Islands, New Adventures” expansion, as well as a new 1602-themed company logo for use in Anno 1800. Available on Uplay.
See how it all began with Anno 1602
Anno 1503 History Edition – 9,99€/$
Includes the updated version of Anno 1503 and the “Treasures, Monsters and Pirates” expansion, as well as a new 1503-themed company logo for use in Anno 1800. Available on Uplay.
After 18 years, the dream of Anno 1503 multiplayer is finally coming true
Anno 1701 History Edition – 9,99€/$
Includes the updated version of Anno 1701 and the “Sunken Dragon” expansion, as well as a new 1701-themed company logo for use in Anno 1800. Available on the Epic Games Store and Uplay.
With 1701, Anno made the jump into the third dimension
Anno 1404 History Edition – 14,99€/$
Includes the updated version of Anno 1404 and the “Venice” expansion, as well as a new 1404-themed company logo for use in Anno 1800. Available on the Epic Games Store, Steam and Uplay.
The much-beloved 1404 is a true city-building classic
And the best news? You won’t have to wait long at all, as the Anno History Collection and all four stand-alone games will already be out on June 25th, making this a very short wait! In fact, pre-orders for all four games as well as the Collection are already available on Uplay right now (the games will be available from all of the listed platforms at launch). To help you pass the time until then, we will have separate blogs detailing each game and all the enhancements and improvements (yes, there is more!) right here on the Anno Union, so make sure to keep checking back.
In an office environment “working in silos” seems rarely a good thing, but out there among the buttercups and daisies these silver sentinels must surely be a reassuring sight to a farmer. Though the word comes to us from ancient Greek, Levantine silos for holding grain have been found dating back over 7000 years. The modern farm silo appears to have been the brainchild of one Fred Hatch, who in 1876, finally managed to convince his old man to let him build a grain store in the barn for green corn fodder. Hatch’s cows quickly became inflated distortions of themselves, living out the winter in luxury, and becoming the envy of any neighboring farmers.
Imagine then the effect, at a similar time, of the “portable” tractor, putt-putting its way nonchalantly about the place, undercutting millennia of peasant toil and hardship. Steam-driven, petrol-driven it didn’t seem to matter; the efficiencies were great, and drastic of course in their implications for Frank and Felicity the farmhands, who had to find other work. “Sorry you two, I don’t need ye, I got me a traction engine now…” And while the Luddites were long gone, you can’t imagine that at least some of these new tractors weren’t torched for their impudence…
Despite feeling much longer, it has only been a little over two months since we first announced our second Season of Anno 1800, including three new DLCs. Now the time is almost here to send you all out into the farming fields with our second Season 2 DLC, the agriculturally themed “Bright Harvest”. Today, we not only want to give you insights into what expect when “Bright Harvest” drops this Summer, but also our thoughts behind the creation of this new content. So, time to put on your favorite straw hat, and to hit the fields!
Stylish hat? Check! Tractor? Check! Let’s get farming!
From its conception on, Anno 1800 has always been a game of two worlds. Early on, you build picturesque farming hamlets that tell you little about the industrial revolution that is about to happen. Later, as you construct heavily industrialized districts full of huge, smoke-belching factories, those hamlets in turn start to seem positively antiquated. Of course, this evolution is not only visual, but also expressed in gameplay, with the electricity system giving players the option to give their industrial production a dramatic boost in efficiency later in the game.
So, when we started at possible DLCs for Season 2, we quickly decided that giving players a farming analogue to electricity is something we want to explore. Such content would have to check a few boxes: it should have nice visual feedback (“feedback units” being the term we internally use for all the citizens and units wandering around the Anno world) and it should incentivize players to consider rearranging their farms and associated buildings. The Tetris-like chase of the most optimal way to arrange buildings to make the best use of limited building space is a big part of Anno, and so we want to give players reasons to reconsider their layouts from time to time. With these goals in mind, let us see how we put them into practice.
The new gameplay in “Bright Harvest” comes from three new elements: tractor modules, silos, and fuel. Let us start with what you have already seen in our Season 2 trailer, the tractors. How do you get them? Tractors are activated via a tractor module, of which you can build one per agricultural farm, connecting it to the main building. Doing so will result in several things: allowing you to construct 50% more fields per farm, which you will need to boost the efficiency of the farm to 300%. In addition, the amount of required farming workforce will be lowered. In other words: tractors allow you to work larger fields more effectively, while requiring less manual labor to do so.
A Fuel Station is getting supplied with oil
Of course, simply building a module once and then forever benefitting from these boosts would be boring, which brings us to the fact that your tractors require fuel to function. This is where the Fuel Station comes in, which will (surprise?) produce the fuel needed to keep your tractors running, provided it is in turn supplied with oil via the railway system. Should your tractors run out of fuel, the farm will revert to its pre-industrialized state, requiring more workforce and only working the normal number of fields (ignoring new fields from the tractor boost). As such, tractors (a catch-it-all term we use for several different machines, as you can see in the screenshots) become available on tier 4 alongside steam motors (at 500 Engineers).
During our internal playtests, we quickly agreed that it would be a shame to only have the tractors for the agricultural farms, so we needed a counterpart for animal-based farms. Enter silo modules, which follow the same basic concept of allowing you to construct one attached silo per farm, which will boost the efficiency of your farms to 200%. Of course, it would be gross malpractice to try and feed fuel to the animals, so instead each session has a good that the silos will consume (and which needs to be transported to them): grain for the Old World, corn for the New World, and in the Land of Lio…oh, now that would be telling! Suffice to say that both tractors and silos will be available in all sessions that have farming buildings. Sorry Arctic, at least you get huskies!
A farmer in the New World
Of course, all these boosts could lead to a lot of additional goods being produced, which must be stored somewhere. Which is why you will be able to give your Kontors and warehouses an additional upgrade each: From tier three to tier four in the Old World sessions, and from tier two to three in the New World. Better even, both upgrades are free to all players, as part of Game Update 8. Buyers of the DLC will also get the ability to give their Oil Harbors another upgrade, as they will have to cope with the oil demands of their Fuel Stations.
That is it for the gameplay side, but there is more! When we released our first cosmetic DLC, the Holiday Pack, last Christmas, a lot of you asked for more every-day ornaments with an industrial feeling to further flesh out your cityscapes. As “Bright Harvest” is more of a systemic DLC that includes less new assets than previous DLCs, we thought this would be the perfect opportunity to throw in some new ornaments that many of you have been asking for, such as haystacks and walls! In total, “Bright Harvest” will include over 30 new ornaments, with a focus on agricultural and industrial themes (including different fence and wall parts). We cannot wait to see all your screenshots once the DLC is out!
You asked fore them, so here they are: brickstone walls!
Beyond that, “Bright Harvest” also introduces 6 new Ubisoft Club challenges to test your farming skills. We also have new rewards you can spend your hard-earned club points on, but this time they take on a slightly different form- ship skins! Many of you having been asking for a long time for more visual variety in your ships, and so you will now be able to unlock new skins for the Battle Cruiser and Collier. Even better, you will be able to use these in already existing games, as you can change the skin of each of these ships individually to suit your taste. And since we already added this functionality, we are of course also extending it to the command ship and train, so you can at any time chose to use your Imperial Pack skins!
Now, after all this good news, it is time to tamper it with some bad news… As you know, we previously said that “Bright Harvest” is coming in Summer 2020. Turns out that is not the case, as Summer starts on June 20- whereas “Bright Harvest” will already be out on June 2! As always, owners of the Season 2 Pass will receive the DLC for free, while it will also become available for a la carte purchase for 6,99€/$ at launch. Stick with the Anno Union for more news on Game Update 8 as we get closer to launch and stay safe!
it has been a while since we ran our last Anno Union vote— high time to do so again! This time we want your input on the topic of our next Cosmetic DLC Pack, giving you the choice between three themes. Once the voting ends, we will begin development on the new content, which we plan to cover with blogs on the Anno Union to show you how the Union’s chosen topic comes to live.
So, what exactly is a “Cosmetic Pack”? As you know, we released the Holiday Pack last December, giving you the option to turn your cities festive with an assortment of Christmas-themed ornaments such as Christmas Market stalls. While many of you loved the Pack, we also received a lot of feedback that if we were to do another such pack, you would prefer to have something a bit more general that you can proudly display in your empire all-year-round. You also provided us with many suggestions about potential themes, which inspired us to turn the decision about the next pack’s theme over to you, the faithful Anno Union members.
More precisely, we plan to release the pack this Summer, at a price of 4,99€/$, which will include between 15-20 ornaments, with the exact number depending on the theme and scope (with the Ferris wheel, for example, being a lot more work than two smaller ornaments). This pack will be a standalone purchase, and not part of the Season 2 Pass. While ornaments and beauty building are super important for parts of our community, we also know that others don’t care for them as much, so we think that having these packs as à la carte purchase outside the Season Passes is the best way to give our players maximum flexibility over their Anno 1800 experience. Enough on that— here are your options! Please note that all content below is cosmetic and will not change Anno 1800’s gameplay.
“Bustling City Life”: Build playgrounds, coffee and ice cream kiosks, and similar novelties.
“Trip to the Big Top”: Have the Circus come to town whenever you feel like it!
“A Day at the Amusements”: Open an astounding amusement park for your citizens to revel in.
Of course, all of us on the Anno 1800 Team have our own favorites that we are crossing fingers for, and we can’t wait to see which theme will emerge as the community’s favorite! Voting will run for two weeks and end on Thursday, May 14th at 11:59pm CET. Happy voting, and stay safe!
