Category: Union Update

Union Update: Community Spotlight

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

A little bit over a week ago we’ve released “Docklands” alongside Game Update 10, giving you all the option to build a massive Docklands district in your harbour. We’ve already seen plenty of examples as to what kind of designs you came up with the Docklands themselves and the new ornaments – you can find some impressions at the end of this post.

We’re happy to see the new DLC as well as the quality of life improvements we added with Game Update 10 are so well-received. Additionally, we want to once more add a big thank you for everyone who participated in last week’s AMA on the Anno subreddit – we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did! 🙂

 

Game Update 10.1

While the reception overall was very positive, we were also made aware of a few new bugs that affected your enjoyment of the game. We’re currently working on an update to address the most pressing of these issues. While we’re planning to release the update in the near future, we do not have a precise date yet. Keep an eye on our channels for news.

 

Community Spotlight – Docklands

We promised some impressions from our community’s Docklands designs, so follow along:

Kaankaan7 combined their “wishlist” with a screenshot of their redesigned harbour area.

Quite a few different layouts were tested by MichaelEugeneLowrey.  You can find one example below but might want to check out the full Reddit thread for additional inspiration:

For a super symmetrical solution, look no further, Wardinary got you covered:

All new content of course has to be “night mode tested” – thank you to Grieswurst for providing some beautiful impressions of the Docklands by night:

And finally… we can see that TheUnbrokenCircle’s shipbuilders were very excited when they managed to get their hands on the new blueprints. Maybe a little bit too excited…

 

 

 

 

*Note: Screenshots and videos in the Community-Spotlight can include elements like buildings from mods that are not available in the regular game.
Please be aware that the use of mods happens at your own risk and can lead to technical issues or bugs.

Union Update: It’s “Docklands” release day!

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Hello Annoholics!

 

It’s release day for “Docklands”! You can now download and play the first DLC of Season 3!

Not only will this allow you to construct your very own modular warehouse district to make more efficient use of your harbour area, but also give you access to the new “Export/Import Contracts” feature. With those you can exchange goods at specific rates, even in large quantities, which allows you to specialize your economy and even focus exclusively on certain goods while importing the rest via contracts.

The Docklands and its modules allow you to turn your harbours into global trade hubs which you can make shine additionally by various new harbour ornaments like *drumroll* two different kinds of lighthouses! We know you’ve been waiting for those 😉

More details and screenshots can be found in our extensive DevBlog from last week!

 

Alongside the new DLC, we’ll be releasing Game Update 10, with various improvements as well as some new features free to all players. We have published the Release Notes yesterday and you can find them here.

 

 

Both “Docklands” as well as Game Update 10 released today at 6 PM CET (12 PM EST, 9 AM PST) and the DLC can then also be purchased as individually for 6,99€ in the Ubisoft Store, Epic Store and on Steam (for owners of the Steam version of Anno 1800).

“Docklands” is also part of the Season 3 Pass – you can read all details about it here.

 

We’re excited to see you create your very own Docklands and are looking forward to your feedback on the new features! Don’t forget to share some screenshots!

 

 

 

Union Update: Twitch Drops & Reddit AMA

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

The release week is drawing near, and we have some final announcements to make to help you prepare for what’s to come ?

 

Reddit AMA

First, since there seems to be a great demand for knowledge, we thought a proper AMA (“ask me anything”) would be a nice idea, to give you all the opportunity to ask whatever question you want to the Anno 1800 dev team.

This AMA will happen over on the Anno subreddit where we’ll start a new thread on Monday. From the 22nd till the 25th, members from various departments of the Anno team will be active on Reddit to reply to your questions posted in said thread.

There might of course be a few questions we can’t answer (yet) for various reasons, but we’ll do our best to address as many as we can.

We will share the link to the AMA thread on Monday via our social channels, so you don’t have to repeatedly refresh the subreddit page to look for it.

We’re looking forward to a great release week with interesting questions!

“Docklands” Twitch Drops

Over the coming days, we will give you the opportunity to already take a closer look at the contents of Season 3’s first DLC – “Docklands” – as well as the improvements coming with Game Update 10, by watching some of your favourite streamers during another Twitch Drops Event.

The whole event takes place from Friday, February 19 until Sunday, February 28.

During the event, you will be able to watch how a variety of selected Twitch streamers turn their harbors into massive trade hubs with the new Docklands district and the Export/Import Contracts. Oh, and don’t forget about all the new ornaments!
Anyone watching them construct the modular Docklands and exporting thousands of tons of fish for a handful of Steam Carriages can grab two brand new ornaments, the “Docklands” Flag and the “Docklands” Lamppost. The only thing you need to do is to first link your Ubisoft account to your Twitch account and then watch the streamers during the event for up to 3 hours to receive your loot. You don’t have to watch these hours consecutively to receive your drop; watching them accumulated on participating streamers will also grant you the ornaments.

After receiving a drop, you need to claim it via the Twitch inventory.
Please be aware that all rewards will only be delivered to you after the end of the Twitch Drop Event.

If you haven’t already done so in the past, make sure to first link your Ubisoft- and Twitch-account by following the steps outlined on this website.

You can find the full list of all participating Streamer below:

Union Update: Season 3 announcement – FAQ

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Hey Anno Community!

 

It was great to see your reactions to the Season 3 announcement on Tuesday, the excited comments, the speculations – and the questions.

We’ve seen a few questions pop up repeatedly over the last days and instead of answering them on an individual basis again and again, we though the Anno Union is the perfect place to reach all of you at once ?

 

How are the Export/Import Contracts integrated into the statistics menu?

Via the “Storage” tab you can get an overview over all previous contracts fulfilled by Captain Tobias. Just like you can with your regular trade routes.

Like all trade, however, the goods exported and imported are not included in the production overview, as production and trade are two different systems in the game which work differently. The production tab checks for constant production and consumption, it presents absolute, reliable values.

Trading, however, is unreliable and therefore can’t be properly calculated into the production tab. Ships have differing traveling time, can be sunk, wind may affect their speed, they may have to wait to fulfil their trades etc. Incorporating goods from these sources as guesses would make the production tab unreliable, and therefore not useful anymore.

 

The new Docklands buildings and ornaments look like they might put yet more strain on my limited harbour space. Could you increase the harbour space?

Generally, with the introduction of the harbor street and being able to place certain buildings in the water instead of only along the coast, you will already be able to use the available space of your harbour area a lot better – especially if you like to play around with buildings to get the perfect layout. Add to that the modules of the “Docklands” like the depot, which are more space efficient than their regular counterparts.

However, we are not planning to increase the size of your islands’ harbour area. All maps are separated into island and ocean areas. The harbour area is always part of the island area and designed to expand from a certain line along the coast outwards to a certain limit. Reworking and expanding the construction space in the harbour area for all islands would have a significant impact on the game’s balancing and can further lead to issues impacting the stability of the game, AI navigation, and in certain cases, even corrupt savegames.

 

“Docklands” let’s you import goods from other DLC like “Land of Lions”. Will “Tourist Season” and “The High Life” provide similar interconnections between the DLC?

Yes, all 3 DLC will provide a certain level of interconnectivity with previously released content. Our goal with Season 3’s DLC is to offer you multiple paths to reach your goal. Owning another DLC will not make your life easier or be the “best” solution, but it will provide you with more options as to how to approach certain challenges.

 

“Tourist Season” sounds like it’s rather focused on beauty builders. As a record builder, will I also enjoy the contents of this DLC?

All DLC of Season 3 offer options for both beauty builders and record builders. The restaurants you’ll build to satisfy your tourists’ needs will also have an impact on the residents living nearby. Just like you might also order a burger at a restaurant nearby and won’t just leave it to tourists and other visitors. This might lead to residents e.g. consuming less bread or beer. Making the most of the bonuses provided by restaurants can be a great strategy to reduce the consumption of certain goods and instead focus on the production of other wares.

 

The skyscrapers in the gameplay footage to “The High Life” look strange, just like extended Investor residences.

Many of you have pointed out that the skyscrapers prototype footage seen in the Season 3 trailer and stream look suspiciously as if someone had just “stretched” our existing investor residences higher- which is coincidentally exactly what they are! It is very common in game development to try and reach a playable prototype state for experimentation as quickly as possible by “kitbashing” any existing assets and features you already have, so you can first test a feature’s potential before wasting valuable time only to find out later that it wasn’t much fun in the first place.

This is an aspect of development that is rarely seen outside of perhaps “making of” videos and usually never makes it into a proper trailer, though in this case we chose to do so as we thought it would be cool to give you a glimpse at our third DLC that is coming this Summer. One of the challenges we have when presenting a new Season to you is that, contrary to many other games, all DLCs for Anno 1800 are being developed by the same core team here in Mainz – which means that by the time we announce a new Season Pass, we are knee-deep in the development of our first DLC, but don’t have any polished gameplay from DLCs 2 and 3 to share (this was also true for Season 1 and 2).

TL; DR: The skyscrapers seen in the Season 3 trailer are just early prototypes based on existing assets, and do not represent the final quality of the feature, which will allow you to build truly modular high rises of various shapes and looks.

 

 

We know there’re many more questions out there and we’re currently planning to give you a Q&A opportunity soon. Keep in mind, though, that some answers will have to wait a bit until we’re closer to the release of the respective DLC.

 

Current technical issues

We have seen reports from players still having their Ubisoft Connect Rewards locked in the game. In that case, please verify the game files of Anno 1800 and then restart Ubisoft Connect. This should solve the problem.

If you’re missing your Chess Table ornaments: no worries, our team is currently looking into this.

 

Additionally, our team is currently investigating possible causes for the freezes and lags some of you have been reporting since Game Update 9.3. We will keep you updated on this topic and are hoping to have more news soon.

 

Winners of the “guess a DLC name” contest

Finally, it’s time to announce the winners from our last contest where we asked you to guess the names of the 3 DLC of the Season 3 Pass: “Docklands”, “Tourist Season” and “The High Life”.

Among everyone who guessed correctly, we have randomly selected 3 winners from both the German and the English comment section. Congratulations to:

marc1808

IDDDS

Killangel42

VaIhaIla_Rising

Sycend

Justin_One_Shot

We will contact you over the next few days via the e-mail address you’re using for your Ubisoft account to send you your Season 3 Pass key. So please keep an eye on your inbox ?

 

We wish all of you a great week, stay safe!

Union Update: Anno 2205 live stream & Community Spotlight

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

While this is not yet the week for Season 3 news, the waiting clearly inspires some people to write creative short stories about their impatience – maybe we should do a story contest later this year…

You will still have to wait a little bit longer until we start with news about Game Update 9.3 – and of course Season 3.

 

In the meantime, the Anno Afternoon livestream with Anno 2205 originally planned for last week will happen this Friday! Join Thorlof when he’s taking his first-ever steps into the city-building world of Anno 2205 on the 29th at 5 PM CET (11 AM EST) over on twitch.tv/ubisoftbluebyte

Community Spotlight

As usual, we love to share some impressions from our community in our Union Spotlight, so let’s dive right in:

If you’re looking for gameplay tutorials or know someone who could use some, there are by now a vast amount of video guides, tips&tricks collection and written explanations out there. This week we want to showcase itroo’s channel who is producing various tutorial videos for a few weeks, ranging from a statistics overview to trading.

 

Is Anno 1800 the hardest Anno title yet? This discussion was recently started on the Anno subreddit – maybe you want to jump in? 😉

 

 

It’s always hard to just pick a handful of screenshots for this section, so we encourage you to check platforms like Reddit or the Annoverse Discord for even more fantastic pictures!

Starting with Paw who shared a very moody screenshot of their Arctic settlement on Discord:

Kaluginmir shared screenshots of his Crown Falls city on Reddit – we especially liked the harbour area with the diagonal quays!

 

“Some love for the New World”, as Wyder_ out it when sharing their big New World settlement:

 

And finally, since we showed this city before this update is definitely worth sharing – Laudica’s circle city is finished!

 

As always, we love seeing more screenshots, clever videos, record attempts and interesting stories that we can share here on the Anno Union! 🙂

 

*Note: Screenshots and videos in the Community-Spotlight can include elements like buildings from mods that are not available in the regular game.
Please be aware that the use of mods is at your own risk and can lead to technical issues or bugs.

Union Update: We are back & Community Spotlight

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

A happy belated New Year to you all!

We hope all of you made it safely into 2021.

 

By now, the full team is back at work after their holiday break and we’re eager to continue working on Anno 1800 and Season 3.

We’re excited to soon share more details about what we have planned for 2021 with you – but for those details, you will still have to wait a little while longer 😉

 

What we can tell you already, is, that Game Update 9.3 is in the works and will – amongst others – including a fix for everyone affected by the missing Ubisoft Connect Rewards.

 

If you’re looking for some entertainment to bridge the waiting period, what would you say about a little time travel next Friday? In this upcoming Anno Afternoon, Thorlof and Ubinmyheart will be playing the one Anno title neither of them has tried before: Anno 2205! Join them on January 22 at 5PM CET over on twitch.tv/ubisoftbluebyte

Community Spotlight

In this week’s Community Spotlight, we’re focusing on 3 milestones or records our awesome community has achieved.

Firstly, the Anno subreddit, which reached 30.000 users at the very end of last year. Over the last years, we have greatly enjoyed and valued the jokes and discussions on r/anno – as well as the welcoming atmosphere for any kind of questions by new players and veterans alike.

If you’re looking for a platform to discuss the Anno series or specific game features, like helping new players with tips and advice, or want to share experiences and screenshots from your game, the Anno subreddit is a great place to go.

As an example, in this post Annolegend takes you on a tour through their city Arch Capital:

 

Now talking records, German Twitch streamer Radlerauge set himself the challenge to construct and start 10 World’s Fairs in just 10 hours. If that wasn’t enough already, he finished them all after 7,5 hours and plenty of time to spare!

You can watch his stream here.

 

And one more mega-record: Drake-1503 recently shared on the forums the story of him reaching an incredible 4 million inhabitants in his current savegame. We have seen plenty of record building since release but the new heights some of you push into are truly impressive. If you want to see for yourself, he also uploaded his savegame in this thread.

 

Congratulations to both of you for these achievements!

And if you’re hunting records or got great stories to share, don’t hesitate to tag us on Twitter or share them over on the forums or Reddit.

Union Update: Happy Holidays!

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Hello dear Anno Community,

 

With the holidays right around the corner, we want to once again say THANK YOU for all the support and comments we received throughout the year and all the great discussions we had with you!

 

2020 certainly was not an easy year overall for anyone, but nevertheless a successful and therefore also rather busy year for us.

Reason enough for us to take some time off and get some rest, recharge our batteries – we’ll be back in January with new energy and soon also news about Season 3 😉

 

But wait, before we leave, we have two small Christmas gifts for you:

Our art team has put together a shiny new wallpaper pack with artworks from Season 2’s DLC as well as the in-game loading screens, which you can download here.

Additionally, you can now also find the complete soundtrack of Anno 1800’s post-launch content, produced by our great friends at Dynamedion, on the Ubisoft Music YouTube channel and on Spotify. Enjoy!

 

Stay safe, enjoy the holidays and see you in the new year,

The Anno Team

The Anno Year 2020 in Review

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Hey Anno Community,

2020 is soon coming to an end – a good time to recap what the year had in store for Anno 1800, and to look at what’s to come in 2021.

We were off to a great start, and in early March were not only able to proudly celebrate that Anno 1800 had reached more than 1 million players in its first 8 month on the market (which earned you all a free commemorative in-game ornament) – but also to announce Season 2!

In December 2019 we had let you know that we were planning more for the game but the full extent of it we only unveiled in March in a dedicated live stream (“Hey Anno Community!”) – which also marked the last regular developer stream in a year that proved to be challenging for all of us.

The first of three DLCs – “Seat of Power” – as well as the first Annoversary were just around the corner and with two more DLC scheduled for later that year, there still was plenty to do.

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Our great community platform, the Anno Union, stayed at the centre of it all to keep you updated on the world of Anno – and even got a major visual and functional overhaul during the Summer.

For everyone who loves a good read, the release of all our DLC (and the History Editions) were accompanied by detailed DevBlogs describing the features and the development of the new content. From “Seat of Power” over “Bright Harvest” to “Land of Lions” (for which we wrote a total of 4 lengthy DevBlogs!) and the two Cosmetic DLC “Amusements Pack” and “City Lights Pack” we made sure you know in advance what you can expect.

The latter were based on a community voting in April, with the “City Lights Pack” coming in such a close second, that we felt compelled to realize it as well.

When talking about the Anno Union, we can’t do so without the visual stimulation and inspiration we got from the screenshot and postcard contest as well as the regular Union Updates with artworks and impressions from the community. We continue to be amazed by the awesome city designs and stunning screenshots you all create!
And even though the COVID-imposed restrictions lead to far less live streams from us than we would’ve liked, we thankfully have an amazingly active community creating video guides or streaming their adventures and record attempts online – regularly accompanied by Twitch Drop events around each DLC release.

 

Looking back, we continue to be extremely proud of the success of Anno 1800 in general and Season 2 in particular. Your continued feedback since release, be it reporting issues or sharing your ideas and discussing balance topics played a big role throughout the last years – and will continue shaping Anno 1800 and its development, with Season 3’s DLC and Game Updates being inspired by community feedback and wishes!

Thank you for your continued support! 😊

The success of Anno 1800 also led to it receiving its own boardgame adaption this year! Anno 1800 – The Board Game was designed by Martin Wallace and published by KOSMOS (albeit in German). An English version is planned for 2021 and we are very happy to see the enthusiastic reception since its release in early Fall.

The Anno History Collection

Anno 1800, however, was not the only Anno title to shine this year. In late June we released the Anno History Collection which included the first four Anno games in reworked versions, which, for example, support higher resolutions and modern operating systems.

Prior to release, we went into detail with dedicated DevBlogs for all four titles regarding not only their respective development history but also regarding the challenges we faced and the changes that were done to each individual title.

It was great to watch so many of you return to old favourites – or discover never before played Anno titles – and we also greatly enjoyed the livestreams we held for each game, especially the multiplayer one for Anno 1404 (even if they were not quite on the normal technical level due to home office limitations). Many of you shared stories and experiences in the chat as well as in the forums, and it was great to read through them!

This way we heard of people revisiting old savegames from many years ago – and finishing them! Thanks to improvements to the games, for example the support for modern hardware, suddenly new resident records were possible, massive savegames from ‘back then’ became playable again and veterans shared these stories, their savegames and the maps they used across various Anno forums.

This wave of nostalgia also hit the writer of these lines, who relived some fond memories in Anno 1602, many years after getting the game gifted from his father to steer his son away from action games. With… moderate success.

Not only old savegames were dedusted, the modding community also became active immediately and started working on making their old projects compatible with the History Editions. This means you can also enjoy the changes and additions of community favourites like SBM, I.A.A.M. or D.E.A.P. with the History Editions.
Keep in mind, that while we love to see the efforts of the modding community, usage of these mods is not officially supported, and we cannot offer any assistance with issues you may run into using them!

Looking back at all this: What a year!

The continued success of the Anno brand in 2020 was accompanied by a global situation that no one expected. So, from early spring onwards we found ourselves cancelling events and workshops, attending lots of press events and meetings online and thinking about how much fun we had at gamescom in the last years. Additionally, working from home office brought its own challenges – but also opportunities.

We’re proud of our team shipping the enthusiastically received “Land of Lions” DLC despite these circumstances – and as we announced just a few weeks ago, we’re not stopping here:

2021 will bring new content and features to Anno 1800 and we’re excited to share more with you early next year.

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Union Update: Roundtable and Livestream

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

In this week’s Union Update we want to give you a short overview as to which dates you should mark in your calendars for the near future 😉

Roundtable on the Annoverse

The first date is tomorrow, Friday 4th, where we and the Annoverse team invite you to a community roundtable – an AMA session on the wonderful fan Discord server.
You can ask questions about Anno or our work in the text chat and the Anno team, represented by Thorlof, Com_Raven and Seraphine will go through them one by one in the voice channel.
The session is split in two parts, with a German one from 7 to 8 PM CET and an English one from 8:30 to 9:30 PM CET (2:30 PM EST, 11:30 AM PST).
You can join the server via this link and then hop in the dedicated roundtable channel.
A big thank you to the Annoverse team for organizing this event!

Livestream – Your Cities

As mentioned last week, we’re preparing one last live stream for the year!
Several of you have already sent us your savegames – thank you very much, we’re excited to wander through your cities and check out your resident and production layouts.
When, you might ask? Well, December 11th it is, starting at 5PM CET (11 AM EST, 8 AM PST) over on twitch.tv/ubisoftbluebyte
Maybe Ubisoft-Santa brought some gifts, too?

Community Spotlight

As always we want to use the Union Update to showcase some of the cool screenshots and creations you shared across forums, Reddit and social.
We start with Nobodyletloose’s beautiful widescreen screenshots, day and night.

Our “Seat of Power” screenshot contest happened a few months ago already, but we’re convinced justinsy would have had great chances to end up in the top 5.

Obviously, we’re extremely happy when the DLC we develop are excitedly received (and bought, not gonna lie) so when Slimdude41 uses the “City Lights Pack” to bring more light to his inner-city – that makes us happy!

Finally, the New World deserves some love, too, and Areokh in our opinion does a great job at capturing the beauty of the southern session.

Union Update: Community Spotlight

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

After the excitement of last week’s news with great announcements for next year, time to catch our breath and look into the near future this week.

First, however, we want to thank you for all the comments following last week’s announcement! We’re grateful for your support and happy that our plans for 2021 were so well received and resulted in so many additional feedback threads and comments which we’re following with great interest.

We’re excited to show you more about what we have planned in January.

GU 9.2 coming

We’re happy to confirm the release of Game Update 9.2 for Tuesday next week, 2PM CET / 8AM EST / 5AM PST. This update will address several bugs that were reported to us as well as some potential causes for multiplayer desyncs. The full release notes will be published on Tuesday.

Send us your cities!

Only a few weeks are left in this 2nd Anno 1800 year, but we can’t end it without one last livestream. In early spring we asked you to send us savegames from your cities for us to visit and to wonder at. We’d love to do so once more and see what you have been building over the year.

If you want to send us your savegame for us to check out live on stream, please send it to anno-community@ubisoft.com

Community Spotlight

We’re not getting tired of looking at your creations and are happy to share more of them in this week’s Community Spotlight!

The release of the “City Lights Pack” was taken up by several of you to redesign parts of your city. Mithaldriel clearly loves the Clearwater Basin – we just hope their residents do, too.

With the Research Institute in the “Land of Lions” DLC it’s now possible to move Clay Pits and Oil Springs. Stuffel_Z used this new opportunity to create dedicated areas for their brick and oil industry.

And while we know plenty of you love chasing for new records and building the most efficient layouts, there’s also something visually pleasing about slightly more “chaotic” city designs like the one beam05 showed on Reddit:

And to close this section of the blog, let’s take a look at darkwhite1602’s city! Oh…

A small bonus, did you know you can satisfy the needs of the first 3 resident tiers only by producing wood, wool and iron? Now you know… thank you, BluntRazor14.