- Anno 1800
- DevBlog
Devblog: New features at gc2018
- 21.08.2018
Today, we want to give you a brief look over four new features shown at gamescom 2018. While only a glimpse at the content we present in Cologne, the new features will get their own dedicated and detailed blogs in the weeks ahead.
Travel the world for fame on a fortune with expeditions
Expeditions are an exciting new addition to the series that will bring your Anno world to life like never before. Send ships crewed with specialist characters out on a variety of adventures as they seek fame and fortune, with gameplay that is a throwback to classic “choose your own adventure” books. Will your zoological expedition return with an exciting new addition to your zoo’s menagerie, or will your crew succumb to one of the many perils they will face on their journey?
Welcome to a new world
Once your European industrial revolution is in full swing, you will soon be able to expand your growing empire to the lush jungles of South America, where all new challenges await. Discover separate resident tiers, master new production chains and race your opponents as you seek to secure the gold and oil reserves needed to power your industrial arms race.
Welcome to the era of archeology!
Listen up beauty builder and explorer; a museum opened its doors in town. With the second big cultural project, the museum will allow you to display the wonders of the world, from fossil findings to artifacts from times long gone. As with the zoo, the museum allows you to place various modules to display your rare items, which your adventures acquired from expeditions to lands far away or from trading deals with other characters.
Blueprints – plan your utopia
With the blueprint mode, you will be able to plan your city layout ahead to create your truly visionary metropolis. With the toggle of a button, you can place buildings before actual construction, which makes it easier to map out your city center or industrial districts before investing your construction material.
What do you think? Are you looking forward to the new features and what is your favorite of all four?
Are blueprints are going to be similar to ghost buildings (placeholder for a future building) or like the blueprints in Factorio / real life (a plan with many buildings which can be built all at once by placing the blueprint, maybe even possible to share outside of the game, e.g. on fan sites)?
What I would love to use is a modified pipette tool, which could drag&drop to select an area with multiple buildings, not just 1 building.
Hello! Sorry for wrong topic of the comment, but I have one qestion. I have seen video with gameplay on YT and UI of industry make me interested. Will you add information about production of goods per minute? I understand, that this feature can make old gamers sad, but it is really useful.
I liked the way this was done in anno 1404 Venice, if I remember correctly.
You had to build a certain building to get this more detailed info. That seems like a good way to do this.
Oh yeah the Baliwick and ”Reeves’ Book” was in 1404, and the Statistics Center was in Anno 2070.
Love the idea of blueprints. Nothing worse than being off ever so slightly in your city design or not realizing how big a future tier building was going to be.
Always hated destroying a row of houses to make things work again.
Yes, blueprints!!!
Blueprints make sense. Movable buildings don’t.
Like many players, I’ve waited for this and I do not have to explain why.
Thank you very much!!!
Totally agreed.
Yes to blueprints (although only for buildings you have unlocked – which seemed to be the case on the gameplay videos I’ve seen)
But moveable buildings (without some construction cost) doesn’t make sense to me.
I guess these might be settings you can turn on and off though?
I try to pre-order the game yesterday and notice that is no Gold edition, so, no season pass this time right~!? Does that mean all of the DLC will be sold separately or did you guys are planning to make big expansion like the deep ocean and Venice(pls don’t tell me there is only one DLC for Anno 1800~!!)~!? and most importantly, are you guys planning on add season pass before the game launch? because I really don’t wanna go through that Anno 2205 Frontiers DLC incident again~!
There are currently no plans for a Season Pass for Anno 1800. Beyond the Anarchist, we don’t have anything to announce on DLC yet.
Best,
Marcel
Well I’m certainly most excited about the new world of South America! I hope that it comes with a lot of new buildings, ornaments, industries and ships – and that you can send your ships between sectors so that your South American ships can be seen and used in other sectors. I also hope that maybe there will be more sectors revealed in the future. 🙂
About the blueprint mode, I must unfortunately say that I’m not a fan… Not only does it, like some already have pointed out, take away the fun in unlocking new buildings, since you already know what they’re going to be. It also takes away from the difficulty of the game (in a bad way). I think one of the characteristic challenges in Anno is to plan your city ahead and struggle to fit in the newly unlocked buildings in your already complex city grid. Adding a blueprint mode almost removes that challenge. Also, if you already can build your “dream city” with the blueprint mode, what’s the point in building it for real later? You already know how it is going to look and most of the reward in reaching a metropolis is therefore already spoiled.
My final thought: If you must have a blueprint mode, make it so that you have to turn it on in the difficulty settings or something, but I would prefer to not have it at all.
Also, already having movable buildings in the game (is it confirmed yet?) means that a blueprint mode should not be as “required”. If you realize that you messed up earlier in your grid planning, you can just move the buildings. If you despite that get odd spaces left around, you can just fill them with ornaments, since that now is something your city benefits from anyway.
From what has been shown so far you can only plan your city using unlocked buildings so you can’t plan the whole city in advance. And you don’t have to use it at all, you can play the game without ever using the blueprint feature. And moving buildings is in the game, gamescom footage confirms it, it will probably be like in 2205, that you can choose if it’s enabled or not or if you have to pay for moving buildings.
just a pity that the game can not be in Dutch, because I am Dutch, but that does not really matter if you have google translate;)
I love it already, and I already feel like the deluxe edition that I get for my birthday.
Blueprints seems a good feature, I have the same concerns, with the traditionally locked buildings until you get the proper tier, but I am sure you can make it work.
Expeditions look interesting adding some form of player input is a good idea, and being text based, could make it easier to add to them, creating diversified decision branches to avoid making them boring.
Museum cool idea and being a part of the great Ubisoft family I think you have great access to all sorts of cool items that can be added to the game. Now we only need enough space to build a big zoo and a museum collection.
If I would have to name a favorite it would be the upgraded expedition feature.
Blueprints, yes please. I’ve been waiting for that feature since I first had to destroy houses to build a church, leaving ugly empty spaces. Anno is not the first game to add this feature, but it’s still painfully missing from many games such as Transport Fever. In any case, you should make sure that it’s possible to place blueprints for buildings that haven’t been unlocked yet. But at the same time it would take away some of the excitement of unlocking a building for the first time, if you have already been able to see its blueprint version. Maybe you’d have to unlock the blueprint in your very first playthrough, which would then be available in all subsequent games? Or maybe the blueprint would first show as “public service building” with only a footprint, without the actual building model? Looking forward to see the outcome!
I am personally not sure about the expedition feature. As it feels interesting and refreshing I am afraid it might get boring in the late game or after several hours of playing. I am talking especially about those choices at the end of the expedition. It might get repetitive quite quickly. But overall I think it’s a good addition.
I can’t wait to know more about South America, its population tiers and production chains. I hope you’ll add more sessions and more climates later with patches or DLCs.
A while ago you mentioned that there would be another building working just like zoo and I knew it would be a museum 😀 I can’t wait to place some cool exhibits there.
I really love the blueprints idea. I saw it already on YT and it’s genius and yet so simple.
My favourite feature might be the blueprint one as I like planning my cities in advance. South America also sounds interesting but we need more information. I hope it will be like Orient in Anno 1404, I would like it to be a bit more complex though, with more needs and production chains available.