Devblog: Botanica

By the end of the nineteenth century, the world was largely connected by trading networks, and the industrial revolution brought a spirit of enthusiasm that modernized society. However, while democracy replaced monarchy in many parts of the world, the general populace had limited ways to be a part of cultural and intellectual exchanges. Workers often shared newspapers after a long shift, and eventually museums, zoos, and botanical gardens were made available for everyone. These places were once exclusively for the aristocracy, but ultimately they served as cultural gathering spots for everyone, exposing more people to a larger and more diverse world. Society entered an exciting age of exploration, preservation, and cultural exchange.

Botanica, the second Season Pass DLC, brings an additional cultural building project to the world of Anno 1800. From inviting green avenues, to flowery compositions or as wondrous as colorful exotic plants from far away, the botanical garden is a feast for the eye in your thriving metropolis. Coming with various sets of flora from around the world to use in your decorative garden modules, we add additional ornaments for Anno players who want to live out their inner expressionist.

The Botanical Garden – Experience the Floral Wonders of Mother Nature

Botanica has a total of 21 unique botanical modules, an additional greenhouse, and 11 new ornaments,   including flowerbeds and topiaries, which can be used in all three cultural building projects. The new ornaments work as connectors between modules, which leads to more freedom and creativity when expanding the botanical garden, zoo, or museum. To allow all players of Anno 1800 to build more freely, we will also bring the old plaza tile connectors back as a part of the free Game Update 5. We are excited to see players’ creations of stunning vistas, centerpieces surrounded by fountains, and challenging labyrinth structures.

The new ornaments are available via the botanical exhibition in the world fair, but in addition to that, we decided to make them largely available from traders like Madame Kahina and Archibald. Players will also get them as rewards for quests and new expedition events. The new event encounters will let you experience stories of keen botanists willing to risk everything to bring Mother Nature’s floral diversity to the people.

Your large garden estate begs to be filled with floral wonders, and for that we added new sets for the botanical gardens, with 59 new plant items in total. While previous zoo and museum sets mainly affected the attractiveness of your city, we will change things up with Botanica. The sets, whose themes are based on various plant families, their natural biomes, or their use for medical or other purposes, will grant you specific fertilities for the island where the botanical garden is located upon completion.

This gives the garden more practical purpose beyond city attractiveness, as it allows you to strategically place the cultural building on a production island to boost your economy. The Andean set, for example, will add precious coffee fertility on new world islands, or make wheat grow in the old world. On top of that, the effects further boost the productivity of the farms tied to that specific fertility. They affect the island where the garden with the full set is placed, with five different fertility effects for each biome and a total of nine sets. And as we want you to freely play around with the new options, we increased the amount of influence free modules for the botanical garden from 10 to 20.

The Music Pavilion – Enjoy the Symphony Orchestra

You have created stunning museum areas and zoo grounds, but we thought that one piece was missing, a true highlight in your cultural wonderland. The new Music Pavilion is the perfect gathering place for tourists and residents to listen to an orchestra playing symphonies of classic Anno themes while the sunset paints the metropole in a scenic light. Once you’ve found the five music notes containing themes from Anno 1701, 1404, 2205, 2070, as well as the “modern” classic from 1800, you can play them at any time to listen to the orchestra while taking a break from extensive trade route management. The Music Pavilion itself is not limited to the botanical garden; you can build one in each zoo, museum, or garden. The music tracks will also provide an attractiveness buff to certain sets in cultural buildings.

And here comes our second Season Pass DLC: Botanica, in numbers:

• 21 unique botanical modules
• 1 glasshouse module
• 11 unique ornaments modules (such as flower beds and topiaries, usable with all cultural buildings)
• 9 new sets for your botanical garden, consisting of a total of 59 plants items
• The new Music Pavilion, which can be constructed in every cultural building
• The Music Pavilion comes with 5 music tracks from the classic themes of Anno 1701, 1404, 2070, 2205, and 1800

That’s all for today’s insights about the second Season Pass DLC, a true content pack for all beauty builders out there, before we take you on an adventure in the icy north this winter.

Botanica will be available from September 10 as part of the Anno 1800 Season Pass or as a stand-alone purchase.

As always, please share your feedback in the comments below and stay tuned for future updates and content from the Anno Union community!