Author: Ubi-Thorlof

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Union Update: Livestream for the Blooming Cities Pack

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Hey everyone,

we want to just share a short update today with some reminders on what’s coming up!

First of all: tomorrow at 5PM CEST we’ll be holding a livestream again, at the center is the upcoming Cosmetic DLC “Blooming Cities”. As usual, we’ll be streaming on the Annogame Twitch Channel.

Join us in chat, learn all about the content of the cosmetic pack and ask your questions to us.

 

Want to get an a teaser in advance? In the little video clip below you can already find some of the new ornaments in action. A DevBlog will follow the livestream tomorrow evening.

Alongside Cosmetic DLC, we’ll be releasing patch 1.6 next week Thursday – the full changelog for it will be ready by early next week.

Your Prophecies of Ash achievements

The “Prophecies of Ash” DLC is now slightly over one month old – a good time to look back at some of your achievements related to it.

We can only say: governors, you’ve been busy at work on Cinis, all the while the volcano threatened your crops and cities!

Union Update: Patch 1.5.2 and our plans for June

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Hey Anno Community,

It’s patch day! Today we’re releasing Version 1.5.2 with several more fixes – including the issue with ships renaming themselves (which didn’t get properly fixed last time), flickering ground plates and some adjustments to rivals’ behaviour related to wars.

Please have a look at the full Patch Notes here!

Upcoming updates

The next planned update will be on June 18th and include some more fixes as well as the second cosmetic DLC: Blooming Cities.

We’ll follow that up with another update in early July. More details on those closer to their release date.

Livestream

On June 10th we’ll be holding a livestream to show you the “Blooming Cities” Pack in action with Art Director Reiko, Project Coordinator Dennis and Clémentine, Junior International Product Manager.

Aside from talking about the very flower-y content, we’re also looking forward to updating you on our plans and answering your questions.

The stream will start on June 10th at 5PM CEST | 3PM UTC on our Twitch channel.

Upcoming and what we’re working on

Looking further into the future, August is, as previously announced, the time of the Hippodrome! Our second gameplay DLC will release around mid-August letting you build an enormous monument in your cities and hold races to entertain your population. You won’t have to wait too long until we start talking about it.

This release will be accompanied by an update as usual, Update 2.0, further improving the game for everyone. To give you a little teaser:

  • An often-requested feature is making a comeback: the note function!
    • Leave notes for yourself as reminders for later in your play-session or when you load your savegame a few days or weeks later and attach them to specific objects (e.g. ships).
  • Take even more phantastic screenshots with the photomode
    • We have seen and admired what you can do with the postcard mode already – with a free camera and some effects you will have even more possibilities
  • Time limited challenges will be available via Ubisoft Connect
    • Aside from the challenge aspect itself, you will get XP for your Ubisoft Connect profile level and Fame points to use in the Hall of Fame

Additionally, we are working on a bunch of further fixes and improvements. Please note that these can still move into later updates depending on their complexity or in case of unforeseen issues. As usual, we will confirm the final changelog for Update 2.0 closer to the actual release in August. To mention just five things currently being worked on:

  • We’re planning to add field workers to farms/plantations after adjustments to the feedback unit system
  • We’re working on a solution to increase the value of the proconsul title, in order for it to be less easily lost upon taking actions the Emperor doesn’t like
  • In the first-person easter egg, groundplates/roads shouldn’t disappear anymore in certain angles
  • We’re looking into Raiders not being defeatable/spawning without their main building
  • Sandarac Tree Nursery will be reclassified as plantation

Talking about both DLC and patches, in the last weeks we’ve held both playtests for “The Hippodrome”, as well as a very early playtest for “Dawn of the Delta”.

Like the playtests we’ve done in the year leading up to the release of Anno 117: Pax Romana, our goals here were to gather feedback on both the overall state, but also the aspects “fun factor”, balancing and UI/UX.

These types of closed playtests will continue for all future gameplay content, and while we can’t go into the details of the provided feedback here, we received valuable input on the UI/UX side of the Hippodrome DLC and its connection to the rest of the game, as well as the province layout of DLC 03 and the clarity/onboarding of its features.

Community Spotlight

Closing the update with a Community Spotlight once more, starting with this website DukeEntropy created: it lets you pre-plan trade routes in preparation for our next Anno 117: Pax Romana session.

To quote them: “I made a website to plan my Anno 117 island and trade routes. Since I cannot play anno during work hours, but I can go to the internet and plan my anno game during work hours.”

Check it out here: https://antondemeester.github.io/anno-planner/

Moving over to the art side, Dulcamarra recently shared a comic summarising her experiences with the volcanic eruptions.

You can find more of her art on her Instagram.

Finally, we also want to feature here some of the awesome screenshots you took for “Prophecies of Ash”, capturing both the island itself as well as the volcano and its eruptions in particular.

DevBlog: Fire and Destruction – the job of a Technical Artist

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Salve Anno Community!

My name is Oliver Mertins, Senior Technical Artist on Anno 117: Pax Romana. I’m with Ubisoft Mainz for 5 years and have started on Anno 117: Pax Romana at the very beginning.

 

Often, I get asked: “What does a Technical Artist actually do?”
Simply said, they are the glue between the Art (e.g. Level Art, 3D Art, Animation) and development departments (e.g. Game Play Programming, Engine Development, Tools Development).

While Artists tend to think in shapes, colors and timing, Programmers might think in game logic, code design patterns or data types. To bridge between them a Technical Artist is needed who understands both worlds and can support in meetings, write scripts and little tools to support the Artists, do research to explore new fields of interest or investigate into asset optimization to improve the game performance. They take care of the more technical art side, like building functionality out of node networks, creating control rigs for character or props, developing procedural materials or stunning visual effects using several techniques or even writing shaders.

When you think about Anno, you immediately think about building a beautiful-looking empire. But today I will show you how to burn it down to the ground, leaving destruction and chaos. Curious? Then read on

Creating a fire

In ancient times, fire was a central element for humankind to survive and prosper. It not only spent light at night but enabled us to cook and prepare food, manufacture goods and weapons and helped to protect against wild animals. But whenever we thought we had total control over the forces of nature, we were proven wrong, as the great fire in Rome under Emperor Nero showed, for example.
All these cases found its way into Anno 117: Pax Romana – but before we start to create and control an inferno, we need to start mastering small flames and sparks first.

For achieving a vivid blazing fire effect, we will combine multiple visual components starting with emissive flames at its core, sparks for tiny details, heat distortion and a light source to send out light and shadow to its surrounding, to behave believable in the game world. Some aspects will be artistically exaggerated compared to reality to be visible from the usual player-perspective or to create more dramatic imagery.

For creating animated flames, we jump into the most advanced tool for creating visual effects: Side FX Houdini. Here we gain the ability to create digital fire-based rules on how it would work in the real world. This is called a simulation and will be done for each element: the flame, smoke and embers flying through the heated air.

Since a high-resolution simulation contains too much data to process in a real-time game environment, we need to simplify the information by baking a single animated flame into a texture – the “flipbook”. It will be read from left to right and from top to bottom in a repeating fashion from a shader later.

Now we want to have the appearance of a three-dimensional object as well, so we create multiple moving points in space called “particles” and attach the flipbook at each point to create the overall moving fire shape. Here is an overview of the fire ingredients:

Of particles, heat effects and light sources

“But wait a moment, the flipbook texture is just black and white, where are the colors?”, you might ask.
By using a gray scale texture for the flames and a fire color ramp texture, we can later tweak the colors of all fires in the game at a central place. This makes iteration and achieving a consistent quality much easier. We go even further and split the color into two ramp textures, one for the emitting color and one for the pure albedo color. But this is just for a more vivid color shifting look. These will be used as separate inputs for our shader later.

What else would you expect from a fire? Right, sparks! Let’s add some:
Back in Houdini we create particles flying around affected by wind turbulence and gravity. We make them a bit bigger than in reality to have them visible even from greater distance.

Now that we have made the more obvious and “loud” components, it’s time to address the subtle ones. We want to feel the heat the fire sends out, meaning, we want to distort the air around the fire. So, let’s add a few particles for that as well. To achieve the effect, a normal map gets assigned in the shader which deforms the pixels behind it.

Since Anno 117: Pax Romana has a day and night cycle, our fire should light our way at night as well. For dancing shadows on surrounding walls or a gloomy atmosphere, adding a light source becomes essential.

In the real world not only, objects get lit but the air around the light source as well. Tiny dust particles fly through the air reacting and transporting the light further, creating what we perceive as beams or god rays for example.

And there we have it:

Combined with fireplaces and baskets it nicely illuminates the city:

Setting a city on fire (in-game)

Now that we made fire, let’s have a look at unloved fire city incidents.
In Anno 117: Pax Romana we have three types of incidents: fires, disease, and uprisings. The fire incident is what we want to have a closer look at.

 

Overall fire incidents were a complex topic because they required multiple departments to achieve the overall feeling. When the incident happens, residents panic and run away, resolver units come to the rescue, extinguishing smaller fires. The air fills up with smoke, rooftop holes become visible and multiple fires spread in dangerous rings across the city leaving ruins behind. Therefore, multiple types of fires and smoke effects in several sizes were created, position markers were added to every building and all pieces got balanced and adjusted. For example: in the first iteration the smoke was way too intense from the players’ perspective, hiding the actions of residents and resolver units.

Looking at a single residence building the visual dramaturgy can be explained:

First, smoke and small fires start to evolve, getting bigger and more threatening.
After the fire has eaten through the building, holes in the rooftop get visible, showing glowing and black burned wood beams. When the building has reached its end, it collapses to dust leaving ruins behind.

How to destroy a building

This leads me to the final topic: Building Destruction.
Since Anno 117: Pax Romana contains many different building types and creating an individual destruction animation would require significant extra hard drive storage, we came up with several solutions for specific cases.

The bulk of buildings which are not that often destroyed, get a shader solution with additional smoke and dust effects leaving the detailed destruction animation for military strategic targets like walls, towers, gates and the villa which get seen relatively often.

Usually, the buildings are created in an “onion style” meaning multiple single sided shells got added to compose a building. Unfortunately, this is not ideal for the destruction process for which a “solid” geometry – closed geometry from all sides – is needed.

Therefore, the mesh gets prepared to be solid first. Afterwards it gets cut into pieces – “fractured” as we say – by using simplified fracture patterns, each standing for a different material like wood splitting into long shards, while stone bricks stay as single bricks compared to concrete material crumbling into many pieces. Marble, for example, gets chopped horizontally into multiple pieces:

Now let’s have a look at how we achieved the destruction animation for the stone tower.

By having loose fractured pieces only, our tower would instantly fall apart in an uncontrolled way – but that is not what we want. So, to gain controllability, we glue the loose pieces together and remove the glue partly over time, exactly where and when we want. This results in areas where the tower crumbles first, then second and so on which looks much more realistic.

In our game engine – the Empire Engine – we use a technique called “vertex animation” to playback the animation of the falling pieces in a shader. This is an alternative method for animated meshes compared to the “bone with a skinned mesh” approach usually used for characters and animals. A vertex animation requires two animation textures, one for translation and another one for rotation of the fractured pieces in addition to the fractured mesh. All these get exported, converted and put together by a python script to speed up and smooth out the process.

This is only a high-level overview of the main process of how we destroy specific assets. The whole network to do all these steps bit by bit looks like this under the Houdini hood:

This brings me to the end of the insights into fire and destruction. I hope you will enjoy the effects as much as we do while playing Anno 117: Pax Romana.

Have fun,

Oliver

Union Update: Our plans for May and June

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Patches and Updates

On May 11th, we released Patch 1.5.1 with various bug fixes you can find here. We also added an additional Tier for each Latium and Albion in the Hall of Fame with more ornaments and other unlocks.

 

Right now, we are working on Patch 1.5.2, with a release planned for May 28th. It will address some other problems like not-buildable obsidian groundplates, various “dead tiles” in harbour areas, and the problem with ships changing their name which didn’t get entirely fixed with 1.5.1.

We will share the patch notes when we have finalised the patch, early next week.

 

Beyond that, another update is planned for mid-June with additional fixes and changes, as well as the release of the already announced “Blooming Cities” Cosmetic Pack.

Encountered an issue? Use the Bug Reporter!

If you encounter issues like the ones mentioned above, the best place to report them (or check if someone else has already reported them), is the Bug Reporter website:

https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/anno/117-pax-romana/bug-reporter

This website allows you to submit bug reports for us to investigate, and you can also follow their current status as we start investigating, working on and ultimately planning in a fix for the issues.

 

Please also have a look if the issue you encountered has already been reported by someone else. In this case you can upvote the report and – even more useful for us – contribute to these existing reports: provide additional details, screenshots or a savegame or simply give more context on how this issue is impacting your enjoyment of the game.

It helps us both with our investigation as well as with the prioritization of issues for future patches.

Next livestreams

After a break, we’ll soon be returning to livestreaming on the Anno Twitch channel.

Aside from devstreams for e.g. upcoming (C)DLC like the “Blooming Cities” Pack and later also dedicated dev insights, we’re also planning to start a series of pure gameplay streams with a completely new savegame that we’ll carry forward into all future gameplay livestreams.

Stay tuned for precise dates for those streams.

Upcoming DevBlogs

In the second half of May and beyond we also want to go back to giving you some development insights outside of DLC content, similar to our articles on UI Design and UI Icon Design in March.

Upcoming are blogs first give you insights from the Art Team, when we talk “Fire and Destruction” on Thursday, May 21st, before covering the topics of sound and music – which we already touched on last year in a dedicated livestream.

We also have some more topics on the UI & UX side we’d love to cover.

And, as usual, if there are other topics or departments you’d love to hear more about, don’t hesitate to let us know and we’ll see if we can make a dedicated article out of it later this year!

Upcoming Patches – A message from the Anno Team

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Hello Anno fans,

 

Our last release for Anno 117: Pax Romana, Update 1.5, was not in the state it should have been, and we’re very sorry that this resulted in many of you not being able to enjoy the game the way you deserve to. The quality of this release did not match our own expectations for what an Anno release should stand for.

 

We also want to be completely honest about one specific mistake. While talking about our first DLC, Prophecies of Ash, we announced that the new island would be the biggest island in Anno history. That statement was wrong. The sizes of the construction areas were compared incorrectly between Crown Falls (Anno 1800) and Cinis (Anno 117: Pax Romana), comparing “buildable grids” for Crown Falls with “all grids” for Cinis (resulting in the mentioned 13% difference) – while it should instead have been a 7% “buildable grids” difference in favour of Crown Falls. These numbers made it into our communication without another review closer to release, and we apologize for the confusion caused by this.

Taken together, all of this didn’t meet our quality expectations.

So, what are the next steps?

Most importantly, we’re working on fixing those recent issues. The hotfix deployed on PC on Saturday and on consoles today addressed two types of critical crashes.

We have another patch lined up (1.5.1.1) that is currently being tested and planned to be released next week.

Among other things, we’re addressing several issues you reported to us:

  • Amphitheatre games can’t be started
  • Filter can’t be applied anymore in the trade menu
  • Ships names being changed upon province change
  • Ships being removed from their trade routes upon activating DLC 01

Full patch notes will follow in the next days and we are working on releasing another patch later this month.

Furthermore, we are reviewing our processes: How we plan, how we review releases and how we validate quality. That means: we’re not just looking for quick fixes to the recent bugs, but are also putting in the work to improve your experience for our future releases.

 

Thank you for sharing your feedback and concerns and for rightfully holding us to high standards. Just like you, we love Anno 117: Pax Romana and for many of us, working on this beautiful series has been a part of our lives for many years already.

We will keep working, listening and improving.

The Anno Dev Team

(Updated) Update 1.5 launch issues & HotFix

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

!Update!

We have just released a hotfix for PC addressing:

  • A crash for campaign savegames upon loading
  • A crash related to defeating a rival

Additional bug fixes are planned for the next patch.

Consoles will receive the hotfix as soon as the patch has been validated for their platforms.

Original Post:

 

Hey Anno Community,

the release of “Prophecies of Ash” certainly didn’t go as smoothly as we were hoping and we want to apologize for the inconveniences caused.

The issue with the DLC not being available in-game despite owning the Gold/Governors Edition and the Year 1 Pass should now be resolved on all platforms. Please do let us know if you’re still experiencing problems with accessing the new DLC content, and add information on which version of the game you own and which platform you’re playing on.

 

Furthermore, we’re seeing a number of automated crash reports coming in related to mainly campaign savegames.

We’re currently investigating these crashes in order to prepare a hotfix and will update you as soon as we have news on its release.

 

We’re also following your reports on Bug Reporter on other issues you are encountering since the update. We’re in the process of prioritizing them for upcoming updates and will also keep you in the loop here.

 

Thank you for your patience, we’re working on providing you with a smooth experience with the new content as soon as possible.

The Anno Team

Union Update: Release Delay, Player Milestone and Free Weekend

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Hey Anno Community,

Due to a recently discovered potentially savegame-breaking issue in version 1.5, we decided to move the release of “Prophecies of Ash” and Patch 1.5 by a week to April 30th.

We always want to create the best player experience, so, thank you for your understanding.

 

The Patch Notes (originally announced for today) will also slightly move and be posted latest Monday (27th) here on the Anno Union. In the meantime, earlier this week we released a blog detailing some of the improvements and changes we’re adding with the patch; if you haven’t checked it our yet, we certainly recommend you doing so.

We reached a player milestone!

In significantly more positive news, we reached our first player milestone:

We’re celebrating 1,17 million governors for Anno 117: Pax Romana!

Thank you for all your support, Anno Community! We’re looking forward to improving your experience with our game further in the coming months.

Free Weekend

As you could already see at the end of the video above, Anno 117: Pax Romana will have another Free Weekend, starting tomorrow!

Play the game for free from the 23rd until Monday the 27th or have friends and family members join you for a nice co-op game.

The version includes the entire base game, is not time-limited and your savegame carries over if you decide to buy the game following the Free Weekend.

Union Update: Free Update Highlights in Version 1.5

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Prepare for fire, smoke and ash: in just a few days, on April 30th, the “Prophecies of Ash” DLC releases on all platforms. Settle Cinis, the largest island in Anno’s history, turn it into your new capital in Latium – and endure the moods of the volcano, bringing both destruction as well as powerful buffs.

 

Alongside the DLC, we’re releasing Patch 1.5, again including a variety of changes, improvements and bug fixes. While the full patch notes will be released on Wednesday, today we walk you through some of the changes and quality-of-life improvements that are included in this update as well.

Please keep the feedback coming – more adjustments and improvements are already planned for future updates, including (as mentioned last week) much-requested features like note-taking and the mod browser.

Big Changes

We’re starting with some larger changes that are worth providing some more details on:

  • Passive Trade rebalance: was too powerful previously and now gets adjusted downwards a bit.
    • Rivals/Traders only sell goods they actually have in stock
    • Rivals pay the same price as traders now
    • Rivals/Traders have less budget for trading starting in mid-game
    • Goods have higher trade prices
    • Important: the old balancing is still available, and all these options are now part of the game setup. While old savegames can migrate to the new balancing if you want, you can also pick and choose how you want to set up passive trade in your savegame.
    • “Prophecies of Ash” DLC: during volcano phases, traders will not sell goods impacted by volcano phases (food, crops, fish, animals)
  • Word filter adjusted in singleplayer
    • While the filter is still in place (mandatory requirement), there’s no more censoring on client side
    • Other participants in a multiplayer match will still see ***** if a word another player used is affected by the filter
  • Various Trade Route screen improvements
    • Assign route to a group during creation
    • Give trade route a name directly during creation
    • Hold shift to copy a good across all vacant slots of a ship
    • Trade route lines are now displayed on the map on the right when hovering over a trade route
    • The number of buildings producing a good is now displayed in addition to the stock level for each island
    • Some more improvements are still in discussion/in development

Small changes

In addition, plenty of smaller changes and improvements have been added, including (but not limited to) the following:

  • It’s now possible to zoom & pan the mini-map
  • Amphitheatre events can now be run on multiple islands simultaneously
  • Weather effects like rain in Albion or the volcanic ash rain from Prophecies of Ash can be disabled via the options menu
  • Destroyed Officia remember slotted specialists
  • We’ve added a “Favourite” category when using gamepad
    • It allows you to add ships, buildings as favourite for quick-access
    • You can add both menu entries and your current selection
  • Gameplay DLC can now be activated at any point while playing
    • When loading a pre-DLC-release savegame, a prompt will appear, but the decision can be postponed to later
  • Added a workforce priority system to help with avoiding negative spirals
    • The priority now is: Military < adding population < population area effect < income < income area effect
  • Defeating a pirate now gives positive emperor reputation
  • When using mouse & keyboard, all pins at bottom of the screen can now be removed/replaced, the resource pins are not fixed anymore
  • Water mill gets +1 knowledge, donkey mill –1 health as area effect
    • to better represent the water mill being more “expensive” due to requiring a river slot
  • Many many visual quality improvements on the UI side, including:
    • Ingame/pause menu
    • Save & load menu
    • Building menus
    • General HUD

Patch Notes and release

Again, please note the list above is not exhaustive: these and other improvements will be added to the game on Thursday! Stay tuned for the full patch notes, to be published on April 27th, for a list of all changes as well as bug fixes that are part of the update.

This update will release alongside the “Prophecies of Ash” DLC for Anno 117: Pax Romana on the 30th at 10 ATM UTC (all platforms except Steam, where it’s releasing at 6PM UTC).

Union Update: Mid-April news recap and roadmap

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Hey Anno Community,

Exactly a week ago we were celebrating Anno Day with all of you with a 9-hour livestream where we went through Anno history and had a glimpse of the (very near) future with the Prophecies of Ash DLC for Anno 117: Pax Romana.

With today’s Union Update we would like to recap the latest news from the past week and what’s coming next in the Anno universe.

Celebrating Anno Day

What a special day celebrating with you all, Anno Community – Anno Day was a success! We hope you enjoyed spending time with us going through Anno history – because we sure did. Each segment of the livestream brought back memories for everyone in the chat and the dev team. Thank you all for joining us last week and a thank you to CityPlannerPlays for visiting us in Mainz and joining the livestream.

But of course, it wasn’t just about the past: we had a glimpse into the future with gameplay for Anno 117: Pax Romana and its first DLC, Prophecies of Ash – which will release April 23. So close! In the meantime, make sure to check out the trailer below:

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And if you would like to catch on the full 9-hour livestream, you can find the VOD here.

During the livestream we also had quite a few giveaways. Congratulations to the winners! Please check your messages on Twitch to get your prize.

Many of you also asked us where to find the art book, cookbook and vinyl, so here are all the links for you:

Livestream next week

If you would like to see more gameplay footage before diving into the DLC yourself, we have great news for you: we’re planning a livestream on April 22nd at 5:00 PM CEST to show you even more raging fires, fountains of lava and mountains of ash. It’s also a great opportunity to ask any remaining questions or voice any concerns you might have to Jan (Game Director), Tobias (Senior Game Designer) and Dominik (Game Designer). So, make sure to tune in on Twitch next week!

Prophecies of Ash DLC

Speaking of the upcoming content to Anno 117: Pax Romana, there’s no better way to get into volcanic mood than to read not one but TWO DevBlogs on the topic.

The first DevBlog will give you an overview of Cinis, the continental island added with the Prophecies of Ash DLC, and a mysterious new character, Caecilia.

Of course, the island comes with its pros and cons. Pros: biggest island in Anno history so far, plenty of space for a huge Latium capital, plenty of resources and river slots. Cons: Occasus, a giant active volcano, with rivers of lava and scorching rocks falling from the sky.

Therefore, to be ready for what’s to come, make sure to check out our second DevBlog to learn how the volcano works with its phases and mechanics.

As the release of Prophecies of Ash is just around the corner (April 23rd), we will soon share more on Patch 1.5, so make sure to check the Anno Union on:

  • April 20th for a blog highlighting improvements coming as a free update with patch 1.5
  • April 22nd for the full patch notes.

What’s next

Yes, we’ve been talking a lot about the Prophecies of Ash DLC these days… but what’s next?

Well, Prophecies of Ash is just the first DLC of the year. Then it will be time for The Hippodrome DLC in August, and a grand finale with the Dawn of the Delta DLC in November! All these DLC are part of the Year 1 Pass.

Future updates will also include more improvements and quality-of-life features, like expanding the statistics menu, a note-taking functionality and the mod browser.

In addition, for all the beauty builders out there, in June we will release the second Cosmetic DLC, Blooming Cities Pack! For all the fans of overgrown gardens – this will be just perfect for you.

What about the third Cosmetic DLC you see on the map? We will keep this as a secret for now.

 

And with this mystery, we conclude today’s Union Update. Thanks, once again, for making Anno Day so special and the continued support!

Devblog: Volcanic Eruptions and valuable Obsidian

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Governor, we’re so glad you’re here! We worried the falling rocks may have sunken your ship.

We urgently need your help: look at our once beautiful city on the hills of Cinis! Houses burned down, public buildings damaged by huge rocks, and fields and forests covered in ash. We’re eager to rebuild, governor, we just need your guidance.

Cause we can build it brighter than before: the volcano’s ash can fertilize our fields and our scouts sent reports of that black obsidian. Let us create statuettes in Vulcan’s honour and give him praise for taming the great volcano.

Come with us, we’ll show you!

Welcome to the second DevBlog to the “Prophecies of Ash” DLC for Anno 117: Pax Romana. In the first blog we’ve taken a closer look at Cinis, the new continental island, as well as the smaller islands also populating the new area in northern Latium. They all provide more building space to fulfil your city-building dreams and let you become the dominant force in Latium.

We’ve also introduced you to Caecilia, the new trader and local oracle on Cinis. In this blog you’ll meet her again when we talk about the volcano’s eruption phases and especially the new resource: obsidian.

We’ll also introduce you the new deity, fiery Vulcan, as well as both new production chains.

Volcano and its eruption phases

Hard to overlook on the horizon is the volcano, dominating the island of Cinis and having shaped its history. For you as a player it is both threat as well as boon.

It all starts peacefully: in its standard phase, the volcano is not active and no buffs or debuffs are applied. The following phases can vary in lengths and each come with some special events, debuffs or advantages.

During the Tremor Phase, you can feel the volcano awaken. Tremors may damage some buildings, but that’s nothing compared to what may be coming after. When the tremors subside you will either breathe a sigh of relief, knowing you’re safe for a little while longer – or you will gaze in fear at the volcano cause it’s time for…

… the Eruption Phase! Rocks are hurled into the air by the volcano violently awakening, lava flows out of the mountain, down its slopes and into the ocean. While your part of the island sits comfortably safe from the lava streams, the rocks falling from the sky deal damage upon impact in the entire province: buildings, land units and ships, nothing is safe.

During this violent but brief phase, all mines and quarries stop working in Latium.

Just when you want to relax and think the worst is over: think again! The eruption is followed by the Volcanic Winter. Ash falls from the sky, covering everything and the acid rain even strips trees of their leaves.

The productivity of all farm and fishery buildings is decreased by 75% and happiness, health and fire safety attributes of all buildings are decreased by 3. On the plus side, Obsidian deposits in quarries and pits will replenish, meaning you once again gain the valuable black stone for trading and the new production chains.

This Volcanic Winter doesn’t last forever, fortunately, and when the ash rain stops, a healthy fresh rain washes away the dush and ash – and heralds the Bloom Phase.

All types of farm building profit from the improved soil quality and receive a productivity buff (depending on the Soil Level, more in a moment. Additionally, happiness in the entire province is buffed by 2 in celebration of having survived the volcano’s awakening.

This cycle repeats, so, you don’t have to wrestle with these events all the time but have plenty of “regular” play time in between. Depending on a few factors, there is at least 8 hours and up to 15 hours in between eruptions, and the eruption and volcanic winter phase combined takes a maximum of 140min, but usually less.

 

We’ve mentioned the Soil Level above: after every eruption, the Soil Level in the entire province of Latium increases by one, resulting in an additional 10% productivity buff for farm buildings. The level can increase up to 3 (30% buff) by default, and can be expanded up to 5 (50% buff) via research.

Additionally, after each eruption the amount of Obsidian that’s produced as by-product increases.

Destruction and catastrophes in Anno

As we do not get tired of mentioning, Anno isn’t about (mindless) destruction. At the same time, the threat and impact of a catastrophe or a war can be a great motivator and add a level of challenge to the game. Natural disasters have been present in previous Anno games and are making a return now with the volcano.

If you’ve played Anno 1701 or Anno 1404, you may remember the volcano there as well: they dominate their respective islands, being placed almost in the centre. As a player, you can build around it and profit from the valuable mining slots – but an eruption immediately threatens everything you’ve built there.

For “Prophecies of Ash” we changed this approach a bit: the volcano should still have an impact on your settlement(s) and cause some destruction, but we placed it further in-land, away from your immediate settlement area. This results, as if you’ve seen above, in the falling rocks likely impacting your cities but you don’t have to worry about lava devouring your half (or even all of) what you built. In fact, even Caecilia’s people are far out of reach of the lava and have built a large bridge spinning one of the nearby lava channels.

 

Importantly, the volcano gameplay (i.e. the eruptions) can be deactivated any time, while still keeping the island to settle on. However, this also means not enjoying the benefits like the Bloom Phase’s productivity buff as well as Obsidian mining (which in turn means no way to trade with Caecilia or produce the two new goods) as soon as all original deposits are depleted.

When deactivated after having endured at least one eruption, the soil level drops by one level every time an eruption would have normally occurred. You can also reactivate the volcano again at any time, and then once more enjoy the post-eruption benefits.

Obsidian

Obsidian is a new resource introduced with Prophecies of Ash. After volcanic eruptions, the Obsidian deposits in quarries and pits all across Latium are refilled (the size of the deposits can be expanded via research). These buildings now produce Obsidian as a by-product to their regular production until the deposit is depleted.

Some of the rocks falling onto your islands during the Eruption Phase also contain small amounts of Obsidian and can be picked up by clicking on them or having a ship collect them (if they fell into the ocean).

Once acquired, you can use Obsidian in two ways:

  • Produce Statuettes and Latrunculi Sets, the two new goods introduced with this DLC (more below)
  • Trade it with Caecilia for new specialists

Caecilia

As mentioned in our first blog, Caecilia will offer you a number of quests to introduce you to the DLC and all the gameplay related to the volcano.

After that, you’ll likely be mainly interested in trading with her: Caecilia only accepts Obsidian as payment but offers over 40 new specialists who are all fertility/deposit-related. With these you can grow, catch or mine resources on islands that otherwise don’t have these resources. The effect of the specialist is active in the range of the Villa or Officia the item is slotted in.

These can be, for example, the Seasoned Snatcher: she provides +75% Sturgeon population to river slots in range. Another example is Caderina: she adds a full (i.e. 100%) silver deposit to mountain slots in range and increases their productivity by 25%.

New features

As teased before, there is another use for Obsidian: two new production chains await you!

The first are Statuettes, made from Obsidian and Limestone, are a new optional “Household” need for Equites and Patricians, unlocking with Tier 3. Latrunculi Sets (a type of Roman boardgame) are unlocked with Tier 4 and – when assembled from Gold, Sandarac Wood and Obsidian – fulfil a “Culture” need for Patricians.

For the pious among you, Vulcan awaits your veneration. After unlocking Vulcan via the research tree, he can be worshipped on any of your islands. His followers will boost the productivity of all mountain slot buildings and generate more workforce from all residences.

On a global level, Vulcan’s shrine improves fire safety (invocation level), his knowledge of mountains and forging techniques allows you to build coal mines (veneration level) and eventually unlock strong area buffs for smelters (exalted patron level).

We already mentioned research: several new technologies await you, starting with the option to mine Obsidian from quarries and pits as a by-product. The deity Vulcan is also unlocked this way as are the new production chains, additional buffs, larger Obsidian deposits and the possibility to also ship both new products to Albion to fulfil the need there.

 

To summarize…

Now, governors, you know how to deal with the volcano and what kind of riches it can bring to your little empire. As mentioned above, if you prefer to just peacefully settle on Cinis and enjoy the abundant building space, river- and mountain slots, you can disable the volcano gameplay at any time. Just keep in mind that this also means cutting off access to Obsidian and the related gameplay (new production chains & trading with Caecilia). And you’re missing out on all the great visual effects our team worked on!

As with our future DLC, you won’t have to start a new savegame but can integrate the new content whenever you like. It might be worth starting a new game at some point, however, for the option to start on Cinis right away, instead of a regular island.

 

After these two DevBlogs, we hope you feel properly prepared to tackle the volcano’s challenges. The rest you’ll surely learn along the way, governors!

The “Prophecies of Ash” DLC releases on April 23rd on all platforms.