Hello Anno Community,

In the past weeks we have seen the Anno modding community grow bigger and bigger, with over 300 mods uploaded at mod.io and hundred thousands of downloads: from additional ornaments and cosmetics to more technical mods that add even more complexity to the game (not for the faint of heart!).

After a break from live streams during summer, we decided to dedicate our next one to mods. If you would like to join us, then clear out your calendars for Friday 29th of September from 5-6 PM CEST: Oliver (Community Developer), Kevin (Technical Director) and Jakob (Lead Tools Programmer) will show how the built-in Modloader works, while giving some dev insights and showcasing some mods.
Please note that the livestream had to be postponed, we will communicate a new time soon.

Community Spotlight

After showcasing the modding works of Kurila and Taludas, we thought of switching the perspective for today and show off some modded screenshots, together with some other interesting posts we have seen in the past few weeks on Reddit and Discord.

Let’s start with this screenshot by Mithaldriel, shared on the Annoverse Discord: this New World city almost looks like a painting, so lively and colourful. If you are wondering where these houses are from, then go check out the Jakob’s New World Cities mod on mod.io!

This modded capital city by domis_cze does not only count up to over 100 hours for its creation, but also over 100 mods! This overview of the city is quite breathtaking, and if you wish to see more make sure to go check the full collection of screenshots on Reddit. Plus, if you would like to know which mods have been used, domis_cze will help you out.

What about this video showing off this beautiful metropolis by Lumpi? A magnet for tourists! We don’t know about you, but the Anno Team would love to visit this place – we can see ourselves strolling through the Old Town and visiting that mysterious castle. If you are curious about the mods used, Lumpi has listed all mod creators in the video description on YouTube.

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We all know that Anno goes hand in hand with math, but mafieth really impressed us with two interesting Reddit posts. In the first one, you can find an extremely useful spreadsheet of Needs Economy Analysis, that explains the economical impact of all production chains. Just by looking at that spreadsheet you can all understand that mafieth really likes data and math – but be prepared to be swept off your feet because there is more. From needs economy to the Ultimate Ship Analysis: in this post mafieth explains how each ship has a sweet spot of cargo load at which it achieves the highest possible throughput, and provides a detailed trade route calculator. As mafieth mentioned at the beginning of the post, trigger warning: a lot of math (and graphs, too!). Kudos to mafieth for creating such useful tools, we are sure the Anno Community will love them!

For our last feature of the day, we would like to show you this lovely National Park by Ancalagon-j on Reddit, who says “luckily I still had a little free space on Crown Falls!”. Well, it does not seem so little after all! Your citizen must be quite happy to have all that nature so close to their city.

Hey Anno Community,

Last week we shared a first modder spotlight, talking with Kurila about his way into modding Anno 1800 and what kind of mods he created so far.

Today, we’re happy to feature Taludas who you might know from the “Wholesome Hacienda Overhaul” as well as the “Riverslots” mods. Let’s get started!

Hello Taludas, hope you’re doing great! How did you get into modding Anno 1800? What was the reason you started?

I was incredibly enthusiastic about the IAAM mod for Anno 1404 which made numerous changes to the gameplay, and I also enjoyed playing with the ARRC mod in 2070 and for 2205 another Anno veteran created the “Revolution” mod.

Later I was particularly fond of Skyrim – I spent more time looking for mods, installing them and watching them than with actual gameplay – and my passion for modding was sparked to new heights.

For Anno 1800, it really started for me in autumn 2021, directly after the release of “Highlife”. The new complexity that was added was enormous and impressed me a lot. And that’s when my first mod idea was born: I wanted to integrate the new product Celluloid into the production chain for the souvenirs. And that quickly turned into more, a third good (Gold) should be added, and the whole thing should either be produced by Artisans in one of the new manufactories, or with cheaper material (brass) by Workers in the Assembly Line. The mod still exists today and was my first change of sides from mod user to mod creator.

After this first step, what did you work on next? What other types of mods have you done so far?

I love complexity in video games. In Anno, no production chain can be too hard for me, no need too much. I can spend hours coming up with new mechanics.

Especially since I didn’t know how to handle the graphics files at the beginning of my modding career, I preferred to bring in gameplay changes and use the original game graphic files for that. After the community developed the appropriate tools, the mods became more and more complex.

My first really big mod was the “Wholesome Hacienda Overhaul“. Since I didn’t agree with some of the design choices of the “Seed of Change” DLC, I invested a week’s holiday well and adapted and expanded the whole thing a bit.

In addition, I have already converted many of the islands of the Old World and incorporated them into the New World. Among others, Crown Falls, which is supposed to be the highlight of a new session in the New World at some point (video impressions: https://youtu.be/wSqFEBe8ZmY).

Through Taubenangriff, I came up with the idea of further island modifications: He planned the river building sites in the New World known from 1404 and 2070. So, I dug in and implemented the idea in the Old World. Add a few new buildings, like a sawmill and a river power plant, and the mod “Riverslots” was born. So far, it’s my biggest and most high-profile project.

 

Did you have any prior modding knowledge or specific skills (programming, 3D art, …) when starting to mod Anno?

Since I come from a completely different professional background, I really started from scratch.

So, in the beginning I had to get used to it: What is xml? How does the modloader work? How is such a graphic asset for Anno actually constructed? Then I learned everything myself bit by bit. Always step by step and with every project I learned something new.

In addition, 1800 is unfortunately not very beginner-friendly when it comes to modding. However, by now I know my way around quite well, have also got to know some new programs, e.g. Blender, and am deeper into the subject. But I’ll probably never become a programmer, I just don’t have the background for that, or the interest.

So, even after almost 2 years, I still make beginner’s mistakes again and again, which make me slap my forehead repeatedly.

You said yourself that you started from scratch and learned a lot over the years. What would you advise other players wanting to get into modding Anno 1800?

Look at other mods as templates! It’s best to start with something simple. In the meantime, we also have a quite extensive beginners’ tutorial, where you are guided step by step on the way to your first own mod.

And the most important thing: don’t get discouraged!  A lot of things are hardcoded, so, sometimes you have to discard an idea because it just doesn’t work. Also, when learning the tools developed by the community, you sometimes need a high tolerance for frustration, because some things are very specific (e.g. the command line tools, or the Blender plug-in for graphics editing).

But the most important thing is ideas! Anyone who has an idea that they would like to alter the game with, should simply get started. It’s a lot of fun and the community is super nice and helpful! We are happy about every new modder!

Just looking at the mod.io library, you already created quite a few different mods. Is there something that you’re working on right now?

I have a thousand ideas on my list! At the moment I’m mainly working on a new major project: “The Queen’s Gambit”:

• All islands of the New World incl. Manola are reskinned and available in the Old World to get more variety in the map generation. Manola has a special place in this: it will be available as the second continental island next to Crown Falls in the Old World! However, not just like that: there will be a separate questline to obtain the island, which is initially owned by the Queen.
• Two new monuments on the converted Manola Island: the Dam, which can supply the island with energy, and the Statue of Freedom, which plays a role in the questline. There, the goal is to gain independence from the queen. If everything works out, there will also be the possibility to defeat the rising separatists and thereby secure some interesting bonuses: You decide which side you will choose 😉

Apart from that, I’m also working on smaller projects from time to time, especially with the background of the community activities, changes to the existing mods are always necessary, so I always have something to do.  Be curious to see what else is in store for you!

 

Thank you so much for taking the time, Taludas. We’re indeed curious what else you got in store!

Like last time, we want to end this blog with a showcase of a specific mod – but we thought “let’s pick two” this time cause they both have something in common that we quite appreciated: They both not only change production chains but also attempt to add more realism to the game.

Let’s check out the “Forest Glass” and the “Glasshouses for Orchids” mods.

The “Forest Glass” mod introduces, as one might imagine from the name, a new production chain for glass: Use quartz sand and potash to produce glass – which historically then had a slightly green colouration. While not a way anymore to produce glass today, back then it was quite important for the Holy Roman Empire and a way to produce a good locally instead of having to import all glass from outside.

In Anno 1800, building the production buildings as well as woodcutters next to each other also provides you with some valuable buffs.

Talking about glass, the “Glasshouses for Orchids” mod replaces the orchid field tiles from the “New World Rising” DLC with greenhouses. Orchids are now grown indoors and harvested with slightly more care than a tractor would show… but you’re also losing the production boost that a tractor would provide.

That’s it for today’s modder spotlight! Check out Taludas‘ mods directly on mod.io or search for his mods directly in the ingame mod browser.

 

You would like us to feature your mod in a future spotlight? Reach out to us here in the comments or on Discord!

Hey Anno Community,

With the mod browser now implemented for Anno 1800 on PC, adding community creations to your savegames has never been easier! We’ve been very happy with the reception following the release last week and hope many of you will give some of the fantastic creations from the Anno modding community a try – especially if you haven’t done so before.

Since we owe a big thank you to said modding community, we of course want to feature some of their creations on our channels. This of course includes the Anno Union, and today we’re not only featuring some mods, but also have an interview with their creator: Kurila!

Read on to learn how he got into modding and what he recommends to players who want to start creating mods.

Hey Kurila! Thank you for taking the time. Let’s start at the very beginning: How did you get into modding Anno 1800? What was the reason you started?

As is usually the case with modding, I wanted to try to implement my own wishes and ideas.

I had already modified existing mods before, but my first own mod was that farms with tractor barns have fast transporters like the electrified factories.

But that was only the start, as we know. What other kind of mods have you worked on so far?

So far, I have created mods that include completely new products and their production, such as smoked fish.

My aim has been to find a way to make fish interesting for engineers and investors.

I have also created mods that have expanded existing productions, for example, the production of schnapps and beer requires either clay or glass in addition to the existing products. Since their previous production was too simple for me.

But I have also created smaller mods that only involve minor changes, such as making the Arctic canteen also function as a warehouse.

Did you have any prior modding knowledge or specific skills (programming, 3D art, …) when starting to mod Anno?

I had no idea about modding at the beginning. I had been playing computer games since I was a child, but otherwise I had nothing to do with computer-related work. My beginnings with mods were with XCom2 where I had adapted values in existing mods, so it went on at the beginning also with Anno 1800.

But at some point, this was no longer enough to achieve my wishes and ideas, so I started to look at how I could achieve this myself.

So, having started from zero yourself, what would you advise someone who wanted to get into modding Anno themselves?

Not to be deterred because everything seems too complicated and incomprehensible.

You have to start small and then develop your work. Otherwise, it’s too easy to get caught up in complex processes without understanding the basic structure of the mods.

I was very sceptical at the beginning about trying to learn how to edit graphics as a person with no experience in 3d graphics, as it seemed so incredibly complex.

But with the help of other modders and their modding tools it is possible with patience and will to learn everything you need.

And, final question: is there something (new) you’re working on right now?

One of the mods I am currently working on is an extension of the production of clothing.

Sewing thread and Wool Fabric should have a relevant role in their production.

 

Thank you, Kurila! We’re looking forward to your future mods, making a complex game yet even more complicated 😉

At the end of today’s blog, we want to highlight one specific mod by Kurila, the “Production Works” one. In true industrial revolution spirit, this one is all about factories, adding for example a Cable Factory – with cables now being required for the construction of elevators as well as for the construction of various buildings, like Power Plants or Radio Towers.

Drinks now also need materials to produce the container it’s filled into: glass for bottles, wood for barrels etc.

You’ll also find more uses for Wanza Timber (from Land of Lions) in adjusted recipes as well as new needs for your population – like potatoes!

Check out Kurila’s mods on mod.io or search for his mods directly in the in-game mod browser.

 

 

You would like us to feature your mod in a future spotlight? Reach out to us here in the comments or on Discord!

Hey Anno Community,

it’s Tuesday, and release day! The new Cosmetic DLC National Park Pack is now available on all platforms (on Steam it will be available from 7PM CEST onwards as usual).

• Ubisoft Store
• PlayStation Store
• Xbox Store

Build dedicated parks for your citizens or simply add hiking paths and picnic opportunities to already existing forests on your islands – and create lakes and little streams. This CDLC is all about being outside in nature. For your people used to ever-growing cities and industrial smog, this should be the ideal opportunity to relax and unwind.

 

There’s more releasing today than just the National Park Pack, so, let’s take a look:

Release Notes

Together with the National Park Pack, we’re also releasing patches for both PC and Console.

On Consoles, it addresses an “out of memory” issue on PS5 and potential causes for desyncs on all consoles.

On PC, aside from addressing two exploits, the loading times of the game with mods have been drastically reduced and we fixed the unbuildable area on one of the New World islands.

You can find the full Release Notes for Consoles here and for PC by following this link.

Mod Browser

Very importantly, players on PC will now also be able to make full use of the new integrated mod browser thanks to mod.io!

Scroll through the available mods either on the mod.io page in your browser or – even easier – in the game directly! Subscribing to any mod of your choosing will trigger the download. Check for each savegame which mods are used and leave an update or a nice comment on the mod pages for their creators.

For you mod creators, we’d love to spotlight your creations ingame and on the Anno Union, so, don’t hesitate to upload them to mod.io, too!

Read more about the mod browser here.

We also set up a subpage right here on the Anno Union with the mod browser itself as well as links to FAQs with more information and redirections for further resources. Check it out: https://www.anno-union.com/mods/

Hey Anno Community,

Happy Friday! As you are getting ready to jump into the weekend, we thought of giving you one last recap on the latest news. On the menu today: a quick overview of the timeline for the upcoming CDLC after this week’s teaser, an update on the Anno Union Survey, and a Community Spotlight for dessert.

In terms of livestreams, we will take a short (summer-)break after having featured the first four Anno games in the recent months on our Twitch channel. We’ll likely resume our streams in late August or early September and keep you updated on this topic here.

A first teaser for the upcoming Cosmetic DLC

Some of you might have noticed this on Twitter and Facebook – last Tuesday, we shared a cheeky little sneak peek of the upcoming Cosmetic DLC:

 

A trail sign? A mysterious path leading to… the Lake District? Well, if you want to find out more about the new ornaments, keep your eyes on our social channels and the Anno Union: there’s one more teaser coming up next week, as well as a dedicated DevBlog on Wednesday 26 July, that will reveal the release date of the CDLC.

For the Game Update 18 Release Notes you’ll need to wait just a little bit longer, as we will have them ready for you in early August. Stay tuned for those!

In the meantime, we would like to know your guesses about the theme of the upcoming CDLC, so feel free to share them in the comments below. Let’s see who gets the closest to the correct one! 😉

Anno Union Survey

As you might remember, a couple of weeks ago we asked for your feedback about the Anno Union, your experience with the website and our communication over the last years in general. We have received so much valuable feedback from the survey you completed – and we would like to thank everyone who participated! Today, we would like to touch on a few topics that were highlighted a few times.

Forums – Well, not entirely surprising, but you made it pretty clear that you loved the forums and are missing a comparable platform right now, even if you’re using Discord and Reddit. As you know, Ubisoft is currently not planning to operate forums anymore, but we have taken note and will look into communication channels, old and new, as well as improvements to existing ones for the future and our next project.

Blogs (cadence/length) – From your answers, we learned that while the length of our (dev-)blogs seem to be just right for the majority of you, some would like to see more digestible blogs and would prefer to rather have more but shorter articles. We will keep this in mind for the future and see if certain topics can be split into different chapters, to give each article a stronger focus. In terms of cadence there will always be periods (like right now, for example) in which we won’t have too much to share with you and when news will be rarer, but we will do our best to give you a better overview and info on what’s coming in the immediate future. See the paragraph regarding the upcoming Cosmetic DLC.

Dark Mode – We were happy to read that the dark mode for the Anno Union is widely used, but we acknowledge that there are a some areas that could see some improvements. Thank you for pointing this out, we put those points on our list.

Q&As – We have always enjoyed doing Q&As with the Community, as it always was a great way for us to reply to your questions directly but also to connect with you all around the world. And clearly, you enjoyed them, too, since this topic was brought up several times in your answers to the survey. So, while we have to ask you for just a bit of patience: When the time comes, we will resume Q&As for our next project.

Community Spotlight

Now it’s time to focus on the creations of our beloved Community. We have seen quite a few outstanding screenshots lately, and we can safely say that your beauty building skills never cease to amaze us.

Speaking of beauty building, let’s start with this “beautiful” and maybe a bit abstract (???) creation by Aestris, shared on the Annoverse Discord. Three Christmas trees, and a panoramic wheel in the middle of a spiral made of canals and wheat fields. What’s the symbolic meaning behind all this? Is it a visual representation of the rule of the golden section? We have so many questions.

With summer heatwaves hitting quite hard in many parts of the world, we thought we could share a video by AnnoEffect, that feels quite… refreshing – but also looks great! After watching this video, we can confirm that Anno 1800 perfectly combines with scenic summer storms. We recommend watching this with earphones on, the sound of the rain feels so relaxing!

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If you’re new to beauty building and would like to give it a try, Taka has shared a super interesting and useful video on how to combine the game content and some of the most popular mods out there, in order to create the cities of your dreams. Enjoy!

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Finally, Laudica has shared this amazing creation on the Annoverse Discord. While still a work in progress, we were amazed by the creativity (combined with a lot of patience, too!) of this screenshot. We cannot wait to see the finished work! If you are curious to see how this evolves, do not forget to check the Annoverse for updates!

Hey Anno Community,

Today’s Union Update will mainly focus on a selection of great community creations in the “Spotlight” but first we want to announce two upcoming Annoversary livestreams:

• The first will be an Anno 1503 livestream on this Friday, June 2nd, starting at 5PM CEST.
• And next week Friday (9th) we’ll be following it up with an Anno 1602 livestream.

Our 1701 stream will likely happen towards the end of the month – we’ll keep you updated!

Community Spotlight

Today we have a very diverse Community Spotlight for you with multiple different pieces of community creations.

Let’s start with screenshots of the latest Cosmetic DLC: The “Fiesta” Pack.

First we have Tom D. who turned into a big fan of the purple Jacaranda trees and promptly distributed them all over his growing settlement on Manola:

Following that, we want to share Ionovia’s night-time screenshots (one of which we also used as a banner for today’s post)– including celebratory fireworks:

We also really loved Johnnyvanderzwaag’s “Deer in the forest” artwork they shared on Reddit:

A very cool surprise was recently posted by Taubenangriff, who shared almost 10min of alpha gameplay footage from their “New Horizons” mod for Anno 1800:

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To change things up, we’re travelling to the moon with AnnoEffect’s picture of their moon crater settlement from Anno 2205:

Finally, to prove that you can have Anno-related fun even outside the game:

We received an email with a fantastic recreation of the palace from “Seat of Power” – in Lego! The two Anno fans spent multiple months of turning over 100,000 stones into a 80kg heavy palace complex – complete with statues, park elements and a fountain. We were thoroughly impressed!

Last but not least, we have a piece of Anno 1602 nostalgia: Moebius created a rock version of the track “In the Beginning” which you veterans will surely recognise immediately:

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Hey Anno Community,

It’s mid-April, the Anno 1800 Console Edition has been already out for one month, Game Update 17 is released… let’s give you a short news recap and a fantastic Community Spotlight in today’s Union Update.

 

Firstly: What about those Cosmetic DLC we mentioned earlier in the year? – Excellent question. As communicated previously, we still have 3 Cosmetic DLC releasing this year (both on PC and console), each focusing on aspects that may have been a bit neglected so far, when it comes to beautification.

We’ll have news and first pictures about the upcoming one (to be released in May) in the coming weeks – stay tuned!

Console & PC: Patches

We’ve also seen some questions about a patch for both the Console Edition as well as the PC version.

Right now, we’re working on a patch for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S to tackle some of the reports you sent us over the last weeks, like issues with the diplomacy menu, some crashes and graphical glitches.

On PC, while Game Update 17 was the last major update, we are investigating reports you sent us after the recent release to iron out problems like the always-visible version number or that some stamps are getting created with special characters which subsequently corrupts their file. We are planning to still address these, as well as any high-priority issues, with a patch.

We’ve also received some reports on desyncs on PC. As a workaround for the time being, please make sure that each players of your multiplayer match has started the game once after Game Update 17 and either changed some settings (graphics, audio, …) or loaded and saved the game. If you afterwards regularly close the game, the chance for desyncs should be significantly lower. Please also make sure that all participants either use exactly the same mods or have all mods deactivated before playing.

Keep an eye on the Anno Union and our social channels for news on the upcoming patches!

Annoverse Quiz Event

Finally, the team of the “Annoverse” Discord is soon holding an Annoversary event on their server, with quizes to all Anno titles – and you can win prizes if you can prove your knowledge! Head over the their Discord server and read more in the news and dedicated giveaway channels. It all starts on Monday, April 17th!

Modloader (PC)

Let’s also not forget about our “happy little accident” last week, when we released the integrated modloader for Anno 1800 on PC. This means, the game will now automatically recognise mods in your mod folder and load them for you. This means you won’t need the other one anymore – please delete the files and then verify your game files to prevent any conflicts.

We want both credit and thank meow/xforce (GitHub link), who created the original modloader you have been using for the last years – and whose code formed part of the basis of what we now added to the game. Your work has been an immense factor in enabling the modding community for our game as it is right now, thank you!

 

We take this opportunity to remind you that mods might cause issues with the game (bugs, glitches, potential blockers), especially when they haven’t been updated in a while. Therefore, please check for potential incompatibilities or ask around on the Modding Discord Server.

Community Spotlight

As you might already know, with the Annoversary Update we added the Stamp Feature to Anno 1800 (PC). In case you missed it, you can check out this blog  to better understand how it works. If you created your own stamps already, don’t forget to share them with the rest of the Community! For example, the Annoverse Discord server has created a dedicated channel where anyone can share their Stamps.

The Anno Community is very dedicated, as we already know for a long time, and reallymilo has created a portal where you can share your Anno Stamps with the rest of the community: https://annostamps.com/

Speaking of Annoversary Update, we’ve seen some of you have been celebrating with fireworks and and lovely decorations in your cities. We hope you keep the celebrations going for a while and keep sharing those screenshots with us!

Let’s start with Qurphi, who shared on Reddit this lovely composition for the celebration. Why a 4 in the middle, you might ask? Well, Anno 1800 turns 4 this Sunday!

Mithaldriel has shared quite a few screenshots on the Annoverse Discord to show off the ongoing celebrations. We chose the one portraying the lovely skyline by night, with the Annoversary fireworks brightening the night sky. What a view!

Would you like to see more Annoversary fireworks? MaxiMALER effekt shared this screenshot on Steam, with a stunning view of the Research Institute and the Iron Tower, while fireworks burst with colours in the starry night. Bravo!

That’s it for this week, dear Annholics. We wish you a great weekend!