Tag: DevBlog

DevBlog: A “Land of Lions” overview

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Hey Anno Community,

If countless comments and questions are anything to go by, some of you are rather keen to learn more about our final Season 2 DLC, “Land of Lions”. So, you will be delighted to hear that we will finally start revealing more today, starting with this first DevBlog. “Wait a minute”, I hear some of you shouting, “what do you mean starting and first?”.

See, the thing is that “Land of Lions” is by far our biggest DLC for Anno 1800, including a lot more content than “The Passage” last Fall! To properly present all the good news and to tide you over until its release on October 22 we will instead have…four DevBlogs for you all!

Part 1: “Land of Lions” Overview

Part 2: Shepherds and Irrigation

Part 3: Elders and Story

Part 4: Scholars and Research

 

And that’s it for toda…wait, you wanted more of an overview? Alright then…

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New Residential Tiers in Enbesa

Let us first talk about Enbesa, the eponymous “Land of Lions”. Enbesa will be a session in the Southern part of the world map once you have unlocked access to it via an expedition (as with our other additional sessions).

The similarities to sessions like the New World and Arctic do not end there; much like them, Enbesa is also the home of two residential tiers, with their own associated housing, production chains and trade goods!

First, we have the Shepherds. The Shepherd’s representative is humble and loves nature, but he is also a keen poet and storyteller who will share his insights into the events around him with the player. In gameplay terms, Shepherds are focused on the agricultural production of new goods like Teff Grass or Hibiscus. As such the Shepherds will of course also play a central role in the new irrigation system.

Enbesa’s second resident tier are the Elders. They are represented by a devout but stern widow, who is an appreciated leader in the community and key to its social life. The Elders are focused on the crafting in Enbesa, producing important goods such as lanterns or tapestries for their people.

Making the Savannah fertile

As hinted at during the announcement of Season 2, “Land of Lions” is revisiting a classic element from Anno 1404: making the land bloom via irrigation. Instead of using the Noria again, the trick to making things grow in Enbesa are rivers and irrigation canals. Rivers on islands have a limited number of river building slots, which you can use not only for some production buildings, but also as the starting point of a new canal. Whereas the land of Enbesa is often dry and infertile, tiles next to water will become green and fertile, allowing you to grow fields on them.

A land of culture and history

Beyond all the sandbox game elements mentioned above, “Land of Lions” is also offering a lot to any players who want a side of story with their city-building gameplay. This starts with the main storyline, which sees you enter the services of Emperor Ketema of Enbesa, who enlists you to construct his mighty new capital, Taborime. As with previous DLCs, the main storyline will introduce you to all the new gameplay elements in the DLC, while also giving you insights into the people of Enbesa.

Besides the traditional story, we are going a step beyond to deliver one of our most elaborate narrative experiences in an Anno game yet, which will give curious players ample opportunity to learn much more about Enbesa’s culture and history. To achieve this, we have created three unique story islands that will serve as quest hubs and may even pose some tough decisions for the player to make.

Old World? New Research!

When we released “The Passage”, we received a lot of feedback from players who said that while they loved the atmosphere and vibe of this frozen session, they wished that it had been more closely entwined with the Old World, and the rest of the game outside the arctic. When we set out to come up with ideas for “Land of Lions”, we knew that we wanted Enbesa to be more closely entwined with the rest of the game. Meet the Scholars!

The Scholars are a new late-game residential tier based in the Old World (but unlocked as part of the “Land of Lions” storyline in Enbesa). So, who is the Scholar? As stylish as he is gifted, he is representative of the well-educated international students coming to the Old World to work in the newly founded Research institute.

Which brings us to the Research Institute itself. Not only is this impressive new building our latest monument in the game (which means that it is being built in several lengthy stages), it also fits in well with our existing university, which served as the artistic touchstone for the Scholars and all related buildings. The Research Institute also serves to tackle several issues we have seen come up in your feedback since launch. For once, it allows you to research and subsequently craft almost every item in the game, giving you an endgame alternative to hoping to get lucky with rewards. It also allows you to use your research points to make “Major Discoveries”, which are powerful abilities such as moving a claypit across your island to another spot!

And that’s just the overview!

As you can see, we were not bluffing when we said that “Land of Lions” is the biggest DLC for Anno 1800, bringing with it not only a ton of new content, but also the much requested research feature many of you have been asking for. We look forward to revealing much more to you all over the coming blogs and weeks.

Until then, stay safe!

The Anno Team

DevBlog: Amusements Pack Cosmetic DLC

Posted on by Ubi-Thorlof

Hey Anno Community,

Today we want to take you a bit behind the scenes and magic of your very own future amusement park, which will open its doors next week thanks to the release of the eponymous “Amusements Pack” Cosmetic DLC.

Before we dive into the process of bringing these new ornaments to life, let us go far afield to talk about ornamentation and the concept of Cosmetic DLCs in general. One thing that makes the Anno community so special is that the games manage to attract many different types of players, who all manage to carve out enjoyable niches within the games’ plethora of systems to find what they are looking for. Traditionally, two of the most prominent tendencies within the community have been the min-max-ers who don’t mind their citizens living in abject squalor as long as they can manage to cram just a few thousand more onto an island to reach that next record- and then there are the self-styled “beauty builders” who use Anno games as interactive dioramas to realize their wildest modelmaking fantasies without too much worry about the efficiency of it all.

When coming up with ideas for our post-launch strategy and DLCs, we always have these different playstyles in mind, and try to think up with new content that will offer something for everyone. Both of our currently available Season 2 DLCs, “Seat of Power” and “Bright Harvest” are good examples of this philosophy, as they offer new gameplay mechanics for the economically-invested crowd, and add stunning new sights to the beauty builder’s toolbox.

The downside is of course that such fully featured DLCs will take several months to develop, which inevitably means that there are always some lulls between new Anno 1800 content coming out. This is where Cosmetic DLCs come in, as they allow us to deliver some new Anno 1800 content in-between the major DLCs. Where a DLC like Land of Lions takes months of work from a sizeable team, the Cosmetic DLCs will take a few artists a couple of weeks to design and implement. This also gives us the opportunity to create some strongly thematic content that may not appeal to everyone (for example, anyone who is not into Christmas themes id unlikely to enjoy the Holiday Pack).

This is also why we do not include the Cosmetic DLC Packs in the Season Passes, as we do not want to drive up the price with content that we know won’t appeal to a big part of the community (the min-max’ers). That is why we think that an à la carte approach is the best way to go with the cosmetic packs, allowing everyone to get exactly the content they want to see in their cities.

These were some of the considerations we had in mind when we came up with the Holiday Pack last December, which was the first such DLC for Anno 1800. Following its release, a few things quickly became clear from your feedback: 1) Anno players love more ornaments but would 2) prefer content that would feel right at home throughout the year, rather than just in the run-up to the Holidays. We also immediately received lots of feedback and long wishlists for future cosmetic packs (these lists were the origin of the agricultural and industrial ornaments that were added to the Bright Harvest DLC).

As a next step, we took this list of community ideas to our artists to see where they saw the potential for a nice themed pack of 15-25 ornaments (depending on their size and scope), and to check the feasibility. For example, we saw a lot of players asking for some form of harbor ornaments, and we actually did some technical tests to see what form these could take, but found the idea clashing with the general lack of harbor front building space.

In the end, the team came away with three topics that we could see making for visually interesting Cosmetic DLCs: a circus, general props for urban life, and the amusement park. With this list, we decided that it would be cool to give the Anno Union who has been so supportive of the game throughout its development the choice of which pack we should tackle next.

That’s why we launched our latest Anno Union vote in April, to give you all the deciding vote between the tentatively named “Bustling City Life, “Trip to the Big Top” and “A Day at the Amusements” DLCs. Of course, every one on the team had their own favorite they were rooting for, so rest assured that we kept close tabs on the voting, and every change at the top of the polls was immediately shared in various chats! In the end, the Amusements Pack took the day, with the slimmest of margins over the City Life Pack.

With that decision out of the way, our artists immediately got to work on ideas, starting with a series of quick concept scribbles. These sketches are intended to quickly produce a wide range of potential ideas, allowing the team to get a feeling for what things could look like inside the game.

When selecting which scribbles, we want to take to the next stage, we consider a few things:

  1. Player fantasy: What are things that players expect based on the chosen topic? For example, it was obvious from the start that the Amusements Pack should include a ferris wheel, so we even put it into the artwork for the vote.
  2. Variety: We want our Cosmetic DLCs to have a good mix between different sizes of ornaments, to give players flexibility in how they can use them. In general, we want to have 1-2 big showpieces (like the Holiday’s Pack’s merry-go-round), a few medium sized ornaments, and several versatile small ornaments you can use to fill any gaps between other buildings.
  3. General fit: Despite rumors of an alleged first-person mode, Anno is of course played from an isometric perspective. This is of course also something we need to keep in mind, as not everything that looks cool when standing before it in real-life will translate well into an isometric game perspective.

It was during this phase that the idea for a rollercoaster as the second centerpiece of the DLC alongside the ferris wheel first came about, with everyone loving the idea of having such a massive ornament (one of the biggest in Anno history).

Next come the first rough 3d models for the chosen concepts. While very rough around the edges and untextured, they give the team a good feeling for how well they fit into the game world, and alongside already existing buildings and ornaments (see #3 in the list above). Once an idea passes this final hurdle, it is in for good, and we can get to finishing and polishing to be ready for its grand debut in the game.

Of course, it would not be Anno if the world weren’t bustling with life, so of course the Cosmetic DLC packs also call for some customized feedback units. If you are unfamiliar with the term, “feedback unit” is our internal term for any kind of citizen walking around your city to give you visual feedback for how things are going (like the groups of tourists gathering around the rarest zoo exhibits). For example, our Christmas market from the Holiday Pack just would not have been the same if the man himself, Santa Claus, hadn’t been making an appearance in it!

Once all ornaments and their respective feedback units are finished, all that is left to do is to create the thumbnails for the construction menu to allow you to place these all over your burgeoning industrial empires, which is where our UI team comes in to help get the DLC over the finishing line. Speaking of the build menu, some of you may be curious about what exactly is included in the Amusements Pack? If so, look no further:

  1. Ferris Wheel
  2. Rollercoaster
  3. Ticket Booth
  4. Ice Cream Stand
  5. Cotton Candy Stand
  6. Tin Can Alley
  7. Shooting Game
  8. Food Stand
  9. Beverages Stand
  10. Strongman Game
  11. Face in Hole
  12. Barrel Organ Player
  13. Balloon Seller
  14. Portrait Painter
  15. “Welcome” Gate (with a second variation of it)
  16. Bar Table

And the best thing is that you won’t have to wait very long at all for your very own amusement park to open, as our second Cosmetic DLC will already be out on August 11, at 6pm CEST/ 12pm EDT/ PDT, for a price of 4,99€/$.

There is one last question to cover, and that is the “Bustling City Life” Pack, which put up a very brave effort in our Anno Union vote and came in an extremely close second. We have been receiving lots of questions about the possibility of doing this second pack as well ever since. The answer is that we would love to do so! Should the Amusements Pack prove to be as popular with players as we all hope, we would be very excited to do the City Life Pack for you all for release after Land of Lions, towards the end of the year, including a small pond with pedal boats to help your citizens cool down in the heat. For now, we cannot wait to see all our beautiful screenshots of the Amusements Pack next week!

Stay safe,

The Anno Team

DevBlog: Anno 1404 History Edition

Posted on by Ubi_MarcelH

Hey Anno Community,

Welcome to the fourth and final part of our series of DevBlogs covering the four classic Anno games included in the upcoming Anno History Collection. This time, we will cover perennial fan-favorite Anno 1404. If you did not get a chance to check out our previous three blogs yet, we would encourage you to do so before reading on (especially the first one):

DevBlog Anno 1602 History Edition, and our general philosophy behind the History Collection

DevBlog Anno 1701

DevBlog Anno 1503

Classic gameplay on modern PCs

As outlined before, our priority with this collection and the four games included (the History Editions of Anno 1602, 1503, 1701 and 1404) was to maintain the classic gameplay that we have all grown to love over the past two decades, while ensuring that playing these games on your current PCs is smooth and hassle-free. This is of course also true for Anno 1404 History Edition:

The game has been completely ported to be 64-bit only, meaning it can now take full advantage of the RAM in your PC, which helps improve performance and stability. This is especially relevant for Anno 1404, as we will discuss in a moment.

 

An idyllic countryside scene in Anno 1404 History Edition

As with the other three games, Anno 1404 HE will support screen resolutions all the way up to stunning 4k, with the game automatically scaling the user interface to remain comfortably playable even at such a high resolution.

Improved and enhanced multiplayer functionality via Uplay. In addition to the tried and true multiplayer setup you are used to, there will also be a quickmatch function and desync recovery like the one seen in Anno 1800.

Anno 1404: One for the ages

As we mentioned last week, Anno 1701 was a game of many firsts. Not only did it mark the franchise’s first foray into full 3D gameplay, but it was also the first Anno game from the current team at Ubisoft Mainz (née Related Designs). Having very successfully assumed the mantle of Anno stewards, the team set out to work on the “Empire” to their initial “New Hope”. When the game eventually set sail in Summer of 2009, it immediately captivated the imagination of players with its lovingly detailed worlds, allowing players to create picturesque renaissance cities that were bustling with life. Having proven their mastery of the classic Anno formula with 1701, Related Designs felt ready to introduce some big new features with 1404, many of which (or at least their influence) are still evident a decade later in Anno 1800.

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The most eye-catching new element was of course the Orient as a second new playable culture in addition to the European-inspired occident. Having an architecturally, culturally and geographically distinct second part of the game, with two separate residential tiers as well as new production chains and goods was not only mind-blowing to players of Anno 1404, but will also sound familiar to avid industrialists who have been spending time in 1800’s New World or the Passage. The Orient even had its own major building project with the Sultan’s mosque (as a counterpart to the Occident’s Imperial Cathedral), and special regional gameplay with the Norias. These machines came in two variations and were used, much as in the real world, to help water the land, allowing players to construct farms in the otherwise arid land. Rumor has it that you may soon see a new spin on this established concept when it is time to travel to the “Land of Lions” in the last DLC of Anno 1800’s Season 2 this fall. The game also put a bigger emphasis on building a living world for players to get lost in with its ensemble of beloved AI characters such as the benevolent Lord Northburgh and his wise oriental counterpart Grand Vizier Al Zahir, the despicable Cardinal Lucius or the fan- and meme-favorite Leif Jorgensen, as well as a huge selection of quests to further flesh them out. As Anno tradition at the time demanded, the game received a popular expansion the following year, called “Venice” (one of the rare references to a real country or city in the otherwise fictional Anno series). The expansion not only added the highly anticipated multiplayer mode, but also some impactful new features. Chief among them was the espionage system, which gave players some interesting ways to mess with their opponents in covert ways, and the assembly, which could be used to buy out other islands (similarly to Anno 1800’s island shares).

 

Norias can be used to make the orient bloom

Having been well received before, the “Venice” expansion raised Anno 1404 to the level of an all-time city-building classic, and the game has generally been considered the franchise’s high-water mark prior to Anno 1800. It is certainly no coincidence that the next two Anno games would explore futuristic new frontiers instead of continuing to explore the middle-ages. It would be a full decade between Anno 1404’s release, and Anno’s return to a historically inspired setting with 1800 in 2019.

With Anno 1404 still looking great and playing just as well, we focused our efforts for the History Edition on making the multiplayer work properly via Uplay (as discussed above), and the late game crash that has been plaguing some players for years. First, let us clear up a misunderstanding we have seen surface a few times since the announcement of the History Edition: the late game crashes in Anno 1404 are not the result of a “bug” in the game, but a consequence of the inherent inability of 32-bit software to address more than 4GB of RAM in your PC. In other words: once your empire reaches a certain magnitude, the game will run out of usable RAM, which will lead to a crash. It is also worth pointing out our general philosophy for Anno, as we do not put hard limits on buildings or units the way many other strategy games do. Instead our approach was always that you can keep building until you max out your hardware or run of out of space in the game world, and we are often deeply impressed by resourceful players finding some tricks to cram just a few hundred more citizens into their cities (you are very lucky that there are no building safety inspectors in Anno!). In the case of Anno 1404, the game unfortunately came out at a time when 32-bit software and operating systems were still the standard, and so players had to contend with the limits of their hard- and software at the time. With the 64-bit version that is the History Edition, the issue of the game running out of Ram will be one of the past, and you should be able to reach new levels of building uninterrupted. Let the citizen-cramming begin! Please note however that due to this change, the system requirements of all History Edition games are much higher than for the original games (though still very modest compared to today’s games, of course). The system requirements for the Anno History Collection are:

 

  Minimum Recommended
Operating system Windows 7, 8.1, 10 (64-bit) Windows 7, 8.1, 10 (64-bit)
Processor Intel Core i3-3220 3.3Ghz AMD FX-4130 3.9Ghz Intel Core i5-4460 3.2Ghz AMD Ryzen 5 1600, 3.2Ghz
Memory 4GB RAM 4GB RAM
GPU NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 (2GB) AMD Radeon R7 265 (2GB) NVIDIA GeForce 770 4GB AMD Radeon RX 470 4GB
DirectX DirectX 11 DirectX 11
Hard Drive 30GB 30GB
Sound DirectX-compatible DirectX-compatible

Other improvements to Anno 1404 History Edition include:

First, because we all know the question is coming: Yes, everyone gets access to the silver ship. You are welcome.

 

The highly coveted silver command ship

Multiscreen support, so you can not only have a globe- but also a monitor-spanning empire.

Borderless Window mode, in addition to Fullscreen and Windowed

Optional multi-placement of residential buildings, to make painting down new housing for your citizens quick and painless

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/655249185

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Anno 1404 HE will of course also have save game compatibility, meaning that you will be able to take your old save games and pick up playing where you last stopped.

You will also be able to create new custom scenarios or to import and play old scenarios created with the editing tools. One small caveat though: We will not be bringing back the old “Gate to the World” portal for scenario sharing, though there are of course plenty of ways to share your scenarios with other players these days.

Finally, languages. Anno 1404 History Edition will support English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Czech, Polish, and Russian languages.

Bonus Content

As mentioned in the Anno 1602 HE blog, we have asked Dynamedion to compose a new History Edition Suite encompassing the main themes of all four games, which you can of course also enjoy with Anno 1404 HE, alongside the rest of the game’s digital soundtrack. Beyond that, buyers of this version can look forward to a special commemorative Anno 1404 wallpaper, and a company logo for use in Anno 1800. Keep in mind that anyone who buys the full Anno History Collection on Uplay will also get an additional fifth company logo, plus a special ornament for use in Anno 1800.

And with that, our series of DevBlogs/ retrospectives comes to an end. All that is left for us to do is to share a list of all versions and where to buy them next week, before the Anno History Edition launches globally on June 25! Stay safe and stay building!

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DevBlog: Anno 1503 History Edition

Posted on by Ubi_MarcelH

Hey Anno Community,

Welcome to the third part of our series of DevBlogs covering the four classic Anno games included in the upcoming Anno History Collection. This time, we will cover Anno 1503, and a black mark on the Anno franchise that we are incredibly happy to finally erase after 18 years! If you did not get a chance to check out our two previous blogs yet, we would encourage you to do so before reading on (especially the first one):

DevBlog Anno 1602 History Edition, and our general philosophy behind the History Collection

DevBlog Anno 1701

Classic gameplay on modern PCs

As outlined before, our priority with this collection and the four games included (the History Editions of Anno 1602, 1503, 1701 and 1404) was to maintain the classic gameplay that we have all grown to love over the past two decades, while ensuring that playing these games on your current PCs is smooth and hassle-free. This is of course also true for Anno 1503 History Edition:

The game has been completely ported to be 64-bit only, meaning it can now take full advantage of the RAM in your PC, which helps improve performance and stability.

An Anno 1503 city in its full 4k glory (low UI scaling)

As with the other three games, Anno 1503 HE will support screen resolutions all the way up to stunning 4k. As with Anno 1602 HE, you will be able to manually select a UI scale to ensure that the UI remains comfortable to use even at 4k.

“Now hold on a minute”, we can hear you shout, “what about the improved multiplayer?”. Well…why don’t you grab a cold (or warm) drink of your choice, get comfortable, and we dive into another history lesson together?

Anno 1503: A great sequel with a glaring omission

While small Austrian developer MAX Design had developed several decently successful games like Oldtimer before, nothing could have prepared them for the meteoric success of Anno 1602 when they first released it in Spring 1998. Between rave reviews and stellar sales in German-speaking markets, Anno did right out of the gate become a heavy hitter in the then-burgeoning PC strategy market. Of course, with great success comes great expectations, so when it was time for the team to plot a course for their next game, they had to do so with the newfound burden of developing a sequel to Germany’s best-selling PC game of the year.

With that in mind, it should not be too surprising that Anno 1503’s development took unusually long for its time, coming out more than four years later in Fall 2002. When it finally did come out, it not only offered a plethora of new content (such as several different biomes and hundreds of building models), but also some big shake-ups to 1602’s tried-and-true gameplay.

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For example, rulers in Anno 1503 could no longer rely on taxes from their citizenry to fill their coffers. Instead, the game followed a more mercantile setup where players had to build market stalls where they sold wares to residents to finance their empire. While some of these changes proved highly controversial, no one could accuse MAX Design of playing to safe with their 1602 follow-up! More impactful changes that first made their way into the series were different cultures such as Venetians or Inuit and the fact that some traders now had their own island rather than just a periodically visiting ship.

While the execution of course varies, you can still see many of these ideas living on in Anno 1800, with our geographically varied sessions and traders like Madame Kahina or the Inuit in “The Passage”. And of course, Anno 1503 stayed true to the form established with 1602 by being a stunningly beautiful game, with highly detailed 2D graphics that were filled with small details that brought the world to life. Much like its predecessor, the game also became an instant success in Germany, immediately topping the charts and becoming one of the biggest hits of the year. In other words, everything could have been perfect for MAX Design, Sunflowers and Anno 1503… if not for that pesky multiplayer mode.

1503 managed to be even more detailed than Anno 1602

During development, it was promised that Anno 1503 would come with a multiplayer mode that would allow players to compete for resources as they built their empires. However, it turned out that with this promise the companies involved may have bitten off more than they could chew, as they struggled throughout development to get the multiplayer mode to be stable with the amount of data being sent back and forth between players. Come release, players found that the “Multiplayer” button in the main menu was greyed out, with a promise of it coming later down the road as a free update. Weeks became months, and when even the game’s expansion pack “Treasures, Monsters & Pirates” (which is of course part of the History Edition) was released without the promised multiplayer, Sunflowers had a proper scandal on its hands.

In the end, it was announced that work on the multiplayer mode was scrapped roughly 1 ½ years after Anno 1503’s release, bringing the inglorious saga to a sad ending. Despite all the work and even a beta test, the team were unable to reach the level of performance and stability required to release the multiplayer mode officially, instead opting to remove the previously greyed-out button from the menu. The resourceful Anno community eventually made the mode available via mods and fan patches, but the black mark of the long-promised and ultimately cancelled multiplayer mode has stuck with the game and the Anno series ever since, to the point where people still brought it up when Anno 1800 was announced more than a decade later by a completely different developer and publisher!

When we started talking about doing the Anno History Collection, this quickly became the crucial point- could we finally erase the black mark and officially release the Anno 1503 multiplayer mode after all these years? If not, there would be no point in doing this collection, so the first step for our programmers was to dive into the old source code to see if we had everything needed. Once we managed to get it running and performing well, we knew that we could offer long-time Anno fans special surprise with the History Collection.

As with the other games, Anno 1503 History Edition’s mode will be powered by Uplay and have not only all the originally envisioned features, but also a quickmatch mode and desync recovery. In addition, we even created all-new content in the form of three additional multiplayer scenarios, to round out the two from the original developers!

Other improvements to Anno 1503 History Edition include:

Three new optional mouse cursors to pick from in addition to the original style

Borderless Window mode, in addition to Fullscreen and Windowed

Optional multi-placement of residential buildings, to make painting down new housing for your citizens quick and painless

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Optional mouse-scrolling for smoother movement across the map

We fixed a graphical glitch that would appear on coastlines; as with the other improvements, this is entirely optional, in case you prefer to see how things looked back in the day

All these improvements can be select from a new options menu, which also offers an overview of all hotkey bindings.

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Finally, we fixed an old issue that put a hard limit on the number of available units in the game(the so-called “FIG value), which would result in a crash once that number was reached. That means that record builders will no longer be limited by this issue and can once again start the race for new citizen records!

The 1503 HE will of course also have save game compatibility, meaning that you will be able to take your old save games and pick up playing where you last stopped.

There is some bad news, however. We sadly will not be releasing an updated version of the Anno 1503 editor, as it was only released in German previously, and issues with the source code prevent us from localizing it. You can however still use scenarios that were made in the original editor in the History Edition. Also, three tracks from the original game’s soundtrack will not be coming back, due to licensing reasons.

Finally, languages. Anno 1503 History Edition will support English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Dutch languages.

1503 was the first game to introduce different biomes into the Anno series

Bonus Content

As mentioned in the Anno 1602 HE blog, we have asked Dynamedion to compose a new History Edition Suite encompassing the main themes of all four games, which you can of course also enjoy with Anno 1503 HE, alongside the rest of the digital soundtrack. Beyond that, buyers of this version can look forward to a special commemorative Anno 1503 wallpaper, and a company logo for use in Anno 1800. Keep in mind that anyone who buys the full Anno History Collection on Uplay will also get an additional fifth company logo, plus a special ornament for use in Anno 1800.

And that is it for today! Let us know about your favorite Anno 1503 memories in the comments and join us soon for our look at the History Editions crown jewel, Anno 1404.

DevBlog: Anno 1701 History Edition

Posted on by Ubi_MarcelH

Hey Anno Community,

Welcome back to part two of our in-depth look at the games included in this month’s Anno History Collection. Today we want to tackle Anno 1701, which is a special game to the team in many ways. But before we get into the specifics of 1701, let us recap our general approach to the Anno History Collection and the improvements that have been made across the board on all the games. Should you have missed our first blog on Anno 1602 History Edition, we would encourage you to give that a read first.

Classic gameplay on modern PCs

As outlined before, our priority with this collection and the four games included (History Editions of Anno 1602, 1503, 1701 and 1404) was to maintain the classic gameplay that we have all grown to love over the past two decades, while ensuring that playing these games on your current PCs is smooth and hassle-free. This is of course also true for Anno 1701 History Edition:

The game has been completely ported to be 64-bit only, meaning it can now take full advantage of the RAM in your PC, which helps improve performance and stability.


Anno 1701 History Edition making the lightning strike twice

Online multiplayer is back! Anno 1701 originally used the since deprecated Gamespy middleware, which means that playing the game online has not been easily possible for years. This History Edition will allow you to play via Uplay, with all the previously available options of classic Anno 1701 multiplayer coming back. In addition, there will be an option for quickmatches, and desync recovery (the error that occurs when the game state between the participating players is no longer synchronized), like what is offered in Anno 1800.

Higher resolutions: As with the other three games, Anno 1701 HE will support screen resolutions all the way up to stunning 4k. And of course, the UI will automatically adapt to your chosen resolution to make sure that the game remains easy to play, no matter if you chose 4k or keep it old-school at 1024×768.

Anno 1701: A game of many firsts

As mentioned above, Anno 1701 holds a special place, for two closely intertwined reasons: not only was it the first Anno game to be in full 3D, but also the first one to be made by the team that is today known as Ubisoft Mainz (that’s us!). Time for a little history lesson!

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As you may know, the first two Anno games were developed by a small Austrian developer called MAX Design, for their publisher Sunflowers. While both Anno 1602 and 1503 were tremendously successful, the way the industry was going was clear, with most other major strategy game franchises of the day making the jump to 3D graphics. This proved to be an issue, with the tiny MAX Design team being unprepared for the challenges of 3D development. And being based in the small town of Schladming, which is best known for winter sports, recruiting outside talent was not an easy solution either. At the same time, publisher Sunflowers had started conversations with a German developer called Related Designs about a potential collaboration on a military-focused realtime-strategy game codenamed “Anno Wars”.

Eventually, things came to a head between MAX and Sunflowers, with the latter instead opting to contract Related Designs to develop the next full Anno game. This would prove to be a major turning point for the Mainz-based studio, which had previously found some success with its 3D real-time titles Castle Strike and No Man’s Land. If this was a fairytale, we would be ending this history lesson with “…and they lived happily ever after”, but more accurately we should say “while they changed their name from Related Designs to Ubisoft Blue Byte and eventually Ubisoft Mainz, they happily developed all main Anno games ever since”.

So there you have it- Anno 1701 not only brought a beloved mix of city-building, trade, discovery, and warfare into the 3D dimension, but was also the first game from the same core team that is still hard at work on Anno more than 15 years later! In fact, if you were to compare the credits of Anno 1701 and 1800, you might notice that more than a dozen people from then are part of the Anno 1800 team, with even more working on other projects inside the Ubisoft Mainz studio. Finally, this was also the first Anno game to make use of the musical talents of Dynamedion for its soundtrack, with the studio becoming our partner for Anno music ever since.

While the switch to incredibly detailed 3D graphics has of course been the most eye-catching change to the previous games, 1701 also had some noticeable gameplay changes, like the central town square – with its visual feedback showing the happiness of your citizens, and the ability to set individual taxes for each residential tier. Avid Anno 1800 players may recognize how these concepts evolved into riots and tiered workforce in our latest title! As was tradition, Anno 1701 also received an expansion roughly a year after its original 2006 release, with the most notable addition of “The Sunken Dragon” being the single-player campaign that the core game had been missing. All expansion content is of course included in the History Edition as well.


“The Sunken Dragon” immerses players in an Asia-inspired setting

Building upon a classic

Here is what we are doing for the History Edition of Anno 1701:

Higher camera zoom: Zoom out further than ever before to get a better look at your sprawling empire (please note that this has to be optionally enabled by changing the game’s Engine.ini file)

Multi-placement of residential buildings: As with Anno 1800, you can now drag and drop as many residential buildings as you want (or your resources allow for) at a time

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Multiscreen support: Extremely rare when the game first released, multi-screen setups are commonplace these days, and now you can make full use of their screens. Anno 1701 History Edition goes even one step further by supporting three different UI styles for multiscreen setups: Compact UI, Split UI or Stretched UI. With these presets, any player is sure to find a style that meets their personal preferences!

Smoother scrolling when moving the camera

Borderless Window mode to make it easier to stream the game online

Anno 1701 History Edition is of course compatible with your existing save games, so you can keep playing right where you left off back when 1701 came out! This compatibility also extends to user created scenarios, as we are also shipping the updated 1701 World Editor with the game.

Finally, Anno 1701 History Edition will be available in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Czech, Polish, and Hungarian.


A typical city in Anno 1701 History Edition

Bonus Content

As mentioned in the Anno 1602 HE blog, we have asked Dynamedion to compose a new History Edition Suite encompassing the main themes of all four games, which you can of course also enjoy with Anno 1701, alongside the rest of the digital soundtrack. Beyond that, buyers of this version can look forward to a special commemorative Anno 1701 wallpaper, and a company logo for use in Anno 1800. Keep in mind that anyone who buys the full Anno History Collection on Uplay will also get an additional fifth company logo, plus a special ornament for use in Anno 1800.

And that is it for today! Let us know about your favorite Anno 1701 memories in the comments and join us next week as we take a look at Anno 1503 History Edition, and the tale of the long-lost multiplayer mode!

DevBlog: Anno 1602 History Edition

Posted on by Ubi_MarcelH

Hey Anno Community,

Last month we announced the release of the Anno History Collection arriving June 25, which will update the beloved first four games in the Anno series to take better advantage of modern PCs, while maintaining the gameplay we all know and love. As promised at the announcement, we will have a separate blog post for each of the games to not only talk about the new improvements, but also about the games and their place in Anno history themselves. As this is the first blog, we will take this opportunity to talk a bit about the History Collection in general, before diving right into Anno 1602 History Edition!

Our goals for the History Collection

The first question that came to many minds upon our announcement was of course “why?”, so let us start with that. As you know, Anno 1800 has been a huge success for the team, becoming the fastest-selling Anno game right out of the gate, and attracting more than a million players within its first nine months on the market. Many of these players have been discovering the Anno series for the first time with 1800, and we have been seeing more and more questions about the older games. Of course, it is also possible that many of our international players have played an Anno game in the past, and simply did not realize! You see, the games industry was quite different one or two decades ago.

In the case of Anno, the history in non-German-speaking markets has been a curious one. The first four games that are part of the collection all had different publishers and distribution partners in different countries, which also resulted in all of them having different names in various regions! Turns out that the 1602 A.D. or Dawn of Discovery games you played in your youth were Anno games! In fact, it was not until the series took a trip into the future with Anno 2070 that the series’ name would be used globally. In this sense, the collection presents a good way to get our entire community on the same page. You may have also noticed that the artworks for the History Editions of the games have new logos that are closer in style to Anno 1800’s, unifying the branding of the series going forward to make sure that you will immediately recognize anything Anno when you see it  (don’t worry- we went with the classic logos inside the games for nostalgia’s sake!).


A typical Anno 1602 city (low UI scaling)

Of course, that is only part of our reasoning- the much more important aspect is enabling players to enjoy these games without issues and tinkering on their modern PCs and operating systems. Both the gaming industry and technology have undergone some huge changes since these games first saw the light of day (keep in mind that even Anno 1404 as the newest of these titles is more than a decade old), which have led to some of these games being harder to play on current PCs and their multiplayer becoming inaccessible. So, when we started discussing the possibility of releasing such a collection, we defined three key goals:


  1. Make them easy to run well on modern PCs. No more fiddling with legacy Windows settings or struggling with hard- and software incompatibilities!
  2. Bring back multiplayer and make it easy to use. Each of the old games used a different multiplayer setup, using either deprecated internal solutions or middleware that no longer exists such as Gamespy.
  3. Above all else, we wanted to maintain the gameplay the community loves, while seeing if we can make some smaller quality of life changes that make playing these games a smoother experience.

Let us go through these step by step!

Porting all games to 64-bit

Given that they were released between 11 and 22 years ago, all the older Anno games were released as 32-bit software (whereas Anno 2205 or 1800 are 64-bit software only). While that was normal at the time (with 64-bit operating systems and processors only becoming widely used much later), it also comes with some inherent problems that the games share with all 32-bit software. The most obvious being the fact that 32-bit software can only address 4GB of RAM in your system, due to a hard limit on the number of RAM bytes the software can address. In other words- no matter how much RAM you may have in your modern PC, these old games can only use less than 4GB of it.

With this in mind, it was a priority for us to port the games to 64-bit, to make sure your growing empires can make full use of all your available resources. You will also note other general improvements to performance and stability, making playing these classics all-around much smoother (this is especially true for the oldest games, Anno 1602 and 1503).

The other big topic on the tech side was of course the graphics, seeing how a resolution of 1024×768 would have already been opulent beyond belief when Anno 1602 first came out. Here we again want to strike a balance between preserving beloved games and making playing them a smooth experience in 2020 and beyond. That is why we have kept all the original game assets intact but have changed the games to properly support widescreen formats and resolutions all the way up to 4k. And yes, full 4k support of course means that the UI will scale with the higher resolution to make sure that you can comfortably play the game! In the case of Anno 1602, you will have the option to freely choose between three different UI sizes at any time during the game.


Anno 1602 History Edition in all its 4k glory, with high UI scaling

Bringing back and improving multiplayer functionality

As mentioned above, time has not been kind to the multiplayer functionality of the classic Anno games, forcing many of them offline due to their previously used infrastructure and middleware becoming outdated or even deprecated. To ensure that you can relive your memories of past battles and will be able to play all four games for years to come, we have ported all of their multiplayer functionality to Uplay, with a feature set similar to what we use for Anno 1800. Regarding graphics, we are ensuring that all the previously available gameplay options and features stay the same, but are in addition to custom lobbies, including matchmaking for quickmatches. In the case of a de-sync (game state of clients differs), we have introduced a comfortable recovery to reduce the impact of such incidents to a minimum (except for 1602 since it uses a different synchronization technique).

With the technical jargon out of the way, let’s talk Anno 1602!

Placing the cornerstone with Anno 1602

The question what makes Anno 1602 special is of course an easy one to answer: Being the first game in the series, there would have not been an Anno 1503, 1404 or 1800 if Anno 1602 had not been an instant hit, and gone on to become one of the most successful PC games ever in Germany. Originally released in Spring 1998 by Austrian developer MAX Design and German publisher Sunflowers, the game immediately became a major contender in the then-crowded city-building genre. Even then, all the hallmarks of Anno were already in evidence: gamers enjoyed highly detailed 2D graphics as they tried to satisfy their citizens’ increasing demands, unlocking ever more complex production chains in the process.

As with all classic Anno games, 1602 would eventually get an expansion called “New Islands, New Adventures”, which not only added dozens of new scenarios and islands, but also improvements to the core gameplay. All this content is of course also part of the History Edition release.

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Building upon a classic

As mentioned, it was crucial for us to preserve this classic gameplay, so new players can see how Anno started out. To this end, we are introducing a few quality-of-life improvements, which are entirely optional (so if you want to play with just one mouse button, be our guest!). These improvements are:


  • Modern controls: Anno 1602 used a very retro control scheme, employing just the left mouse button for all actions. We have implemented the option to switch to modern Anno controls, using the right mouse button for navigation and to order your ships.

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  • To go alongside that, there is also a new mouse cursor to replace the classic Windows-esque look
  • You can now use the mouse wheel for zooming (this one is a permanent change). Fun fact- back then, many mice did not even have mouse wheels!
  • Borderless window mode, making both streaming and task-switching to look up your favorite guides more convenient. This is of course in addition to full-screen and windowed modes.
  • Given their extremely low resolution, you can now opt to have the beloved cutscenes that play when you find a new resource etc. show in the minimap window instead, allowing you to keep building while you indulge in the nostalgia

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We have also implemented a new in-game menu where you can change these settings at any time and added a new overview screen of all the keyboard shortcuts.

Another especially important feature is save game compatibility, allowing you to take your old saves from previous versions of the game, and to keep building those empires in this History Edition! Even better, this support also extends to user-generated content! Not only have we updated the Anno 1602 Editor to work with the new enhancements, but you will also be able to load up any previously generated user scenarios!

Finally, we need to address languages, with the Anno 1602 History Edition supporting the following languages: English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, and Polish.

With these improvements, we hope to strike an ideal balance between presenting classic gameplay as it was intended by its original developer, while giving players some optional improvements to make playing Anno 1602 easier than ever for a modern audience.

Bonus Content

Finally, we want to throw in some additional goodies to thank you all for your support of Anno over the years. To this end, we have asked our friends at Dynamedion (the masterminds behind Anno 1800’s orchestral soundtrack) to arrange a new History Collection Suite combining elements of all four games’ main themes, which has been added to the game’s playlist. Other digital bonus content includes the Anno 1602 soundtrack, a special new wallpaper commemorating the game, and a new 1602-themed company logo for use in Anno 1800. Let us know if you have any additional questions about the Anno 1602 History Edition and see you soon for a look at Anno 1701!

DevBlog: Bright Harvest

Posted on by Ubi_MarcelH

In an office environment “working in silos” seems rarely a good thing, but out there among the buttercups and daisies these silver sentinels must surely be a reassuring sight to a farmer. Though the word comes to us from ancient Greek, Levantine silos for holding grain have been found dating back over 7000 years. The modern farm silo appears to have been the brainchild of one Fred Hatch, who in 1876, finally managed to convince his old man to let him build a grain store in the barn for green corn fodder. Hatch’s cows quickly became inflated distortions of themselves, living out the winter in luxury, and becoming the envy of any neighboring farmers.

Imagine then the effect, at a similar time, of the “portable” tractor, putt-putting its way nonchalantly about the place, undercutting millennia of peasant toil and hardship. Steam-driven, petrol-driven it didn’t seem to matter; the efficiencies were great, and drastic of course in their implications for Frank and Felicity the farmhands, who had to find other work. “Sorry you two, I don’t need ye, I got me a traction engine now…” And while the Luddites were long gone, you can’t imagine that at least some of these new tractors weren’t torched for their impudence…

Despite feeling much longer, it has only been a little over two months since we first announced our second Season of Anno 1800, including three new DLCs. Now the time is almost here to send you all out into the farming fields with our second Season 2 DLC, the agriculturally themed “Bright Harvest”. Today, we not only want to give you insights into what expect when “Bright Harvest” drops this Summer, but also our thoughts behind the creation of this new content. So, time to put on your favorite straw hat, and to hit the fields!


Stylish hat? Check! Tractor? Check! Let’s get farming!

From its conception on, Anno 1800 has always been a game of two worlds. Early on, you build picturesque farming hamlets that tell you little about the industrial revolution that is about to happen. Later, as you construct heavily industrialized districts full of huge, smoke-belching factories, those hamlets in turn start to seem positively antiquated. Of course, this evolution is not only visual, but also expressed in gameplay, with the electricity system giving players the option to give their industrial production a dramatic boost in efficiency later in the game.

So, when we started at possible DLCs for Season 2, we quickly decided that giving players a farming analogue to electricity is something we want to explore. Such content would have to check a few boxes: it should have nice visual feedback (“feedback units” being the term we internally use for all the citizens and units wandering around the Anno world) and it should incentivize players to consider rearranging their farms and associated buildings. The Tetris-like chase of the most optimal way to arrange buildings to make the best use of limited building space is a big part of Anno, and so we want to give players reasons to reconsider their layouts from time to time. With these goals in mind, let us see how we put them into practice.

The new gameplay in “Bright Harvest” comes from three new elements: tractor modules, silos, and fuel. Let us start with what you have already seen in our Season 2 trailer, the tractors. How do you get them? Tractors are activated via a tractor module, of which you can build one per agricultural farm, connecting it to the main building. Doing so will result in several things: allowing you to construct 50% more fields per farm, which you will need to boost the efficiency of the farm to 300%. In addition, the amount of required farming workforce will be lowered. In other words: tractors allow you to work larger fields more effectively, while requiring less manual labor to do so.


A Fuel Station is getting supplied with oil

Of course, simply building a module once and then forever benefitting from these boosts would be boring, which brings us to the fact that your tractors require fuel to function. This is where the Fuel Station comes in, which will (surprise?) produce the fuel needed to keep your tractors running, provided it is in turn supplied with oil via the railway system. Should your tractors run out of fuel, the farm will revert to its pre-industrialized state, requiring more workforce and only working the normal number of fields (ignoring new fields from the tractor boost). As such, tractors (a catch-it-all term we use for several different machines, as you can see in the screenshots) become available on tier 4 alongside steam motors (at 500 Engineers).

During our internal playtests, we quickly agreed that it would be a shame to only have the tractors for the agricultural farms, so we needed a counterpart for animal-based farms. Enter silo modules, which follow the same basic concept of allowing you to construct one attached silo per farm, which will boost the efficiency of your farms to 200%. Of course, it would be gross malpractice to try and feed fuel to the animals, so instead each session has a good that the silos will consume (and which needs to be transported to them): grain for the Old World, corn for the New World, and in the Land of Lio…oh, now that would be telling! Suffice to say that both tractors and silos will be available in all sessions that have farming buildings. Sorry Arctic, at least you get huskies!


A farmer in the New World

Of course, all these boosts could lead to a lot of additional goods being produced, which must be stored somewhere. Which is why you will be able to give your Kontors and warehouses an additional upgrade each: From tier three to tier four in the Old World sessions, and from tier two to three in the New World. Better even, both upgrades are free to all players, as part of Game Update 8. Buyers of the DLC will also get the ability to give their Oil Harbors another upgrade, as they will have to cope with the oil demands of their Fuel Stations.

That is it for the gameplay side, but there is more! When we released our first cosmetic DLC, the Holiday Pack, last Christmas, a lot of you asked for more every-day ornaments with an industrial feeling to further flesh out your cityscapes. As “Bright Harvest” is more of a systemic DLC that includes less new assets than previous DLCs, we thought this would be the perfect opportunity to throw in some new ornaments that many of you have been asking for, such as haystacks and walls! In total, “Bright Harvest” will include over 30 new ornaments, with a focus on agricultural and industrial themes (including different fence and wall parts). We cannot wait to see all your screenshots once the DLC is out!


You asked fore them, so here they are: brickstone walls!

Beyond that, “Bright Harvest” also introduces 6 new Ubisoft Club challenges to test your farming skills. We also have new rewards you can spend your hard-earned club points on, but this time they take on a slightly different form- ship skins! Many of you having been asking for a long time for more visual variety in your ships, and so you will now be able to unlock new skins for the Battle Cruiser and Collier. Even better, you will be able to use these in already existing games, as you can change the skin of each of these ships individually to suit your taste. And since we already added this functionality, we are of course also extending it to the command ship and train, so you can at any time chose to use your Imperial Pack skins!

Now, after all this good news, it is time to tamper it with some bad news… As you know, we previously said that “Bright Harvest” is coming in Summer 2020. Turns out that is not the case, as Summer starts on June 20- whereas “Bright Harvest” will already be out on June 2! As always, owners of the Season 2 Pass will receive the DLC for free, while it will also become available for a la carte purchase for 6,99€/$ at launch. Stick with the Anno Union for more news on Game Update 8 as we get closer to launch and stay safe!

 

DevBlog: Seat of Power

Posted on by Ubi_MarcelH

“Be thine own palace, or the world’s thy jail,” wrote poet John Donne, an idea many a royal and tyrant appear to have refigured over the centuries, constructing extravagant and self-aggrandizing Palaces as an extension of the self— a demonstration of the power and freedom of divine privilege. The masses would look on in awe of what beauty and grandeur was possible, while they themselves grew ever more miniscule.

By constructing vast and lavishly-adorned palaces, rulers presumed they had the personal heft and prestige to fill the yawning emptiness within. Their gold oozed along every rim and chamfer, their
Objet d’art cluttered the mantelpieces, and the oil paintings of their illustrious ancestors gussied up the walls. But mere appearance of power and status will never be enough.

Any such seat of power must also have some connection, no matter how moot, to the important business of state. Such an immoderate edifice as a palace must be more than the oppressor’s great white
elephant— it must appear to the people to serve a purpose in their lives. It must be the constitutional heart of government, from which grave and meaningful decisions come to pass under the gavel, in chambers puffed full with the nation’s great political minds. An illusion of democracy. The Palace is the nexus of legislative limbs that reach out and touch every corner of the empire, where, as no leaping lord will admit, all of the real business is conducted…

The palace is as classic an Anno element as any, having been first introduced all the way back at the franchise’s birth in 1998 with Anno 1602. From then on, it would go on to serve in several other Anno games as something to aspire to in the late game, once you had mastered all other challenges. In this way, it would serve as the ultimate projection of your city-building prowess.  Now, the palace is ready to make its triumphant return in Anno 1800, kicking off Season 2 and living up to its predestined role as your “Seat of Power”.

 

A Seat of Power fit for any industrial ruler

Flexibility
both majestic and modular

The first thing players will notice about Anno 1800’s palace is its visual opulence. The palace joins the ranks of the botanical garden, museum and zoo as 1800’s latest modular building, giving you a lot of freedom on how to arrange the 6 different modules (straight, gate, corner, junction, crossing and end pieces, plus some cosmetic variations on the straight pieces) to your liking. As with our other modular building projects, it all begins with the main building, which you will unlock once the first investor calls your empire their home (assuming of course you can afford the associated significant building cost). You will also be able to build an initial number of modules, based on your profile level. As you attract additional citizens and raise your profile level, you will unlock the ability to place even more modules. And guess what- there is no hard limit on the number of modules you can unlock, with one community member reaching more than 130 modules in a recent playtest! Now before your mind starts drifting off with visions of an all-palace empire, there are some limitations we have to talk about- namely that you can only build one palace in your empire, and it can only be placed on an Old World island (so  either the original session, or Cape Trelawney from our “Sunken Treasures” DLC).

Beyond this limitation, you have a lot of flexibility when it comes to building your palace, and we have already seen a variety of impressive setups in our tests- from extravagant gardens to museums and even a world fair constructed within a sprawling palace’s inner courtyard! And of course, both streets and railway tracks can be placed inside the gates to make sure that whatever you want to construct inside the place grounds is properly connected to the rest of your city!

 

Entering the halls of power…

Projecting
your power, one buff at a time

But what about those players who don’t care pretty looks you, I hear some of you ask? Very well then- let us talk departments and policies! Once you construct your palace, you immediately gain access to one or more departments (based on your city attractiveness), with additional departments unlocking over time as your island increases its attractiveness. So, what do they do? For starters, each unlocked department immediately gives you access to a permanent buff, such as +200 tons islands storage per Harbormaster’s office on that island (each department is specialized on one aspect of your city, such as administration, culture or trade). In addition – and this is where things get really interesting – each unlocked department gives you a choice of several policies, of which only one can be active at a time (though you can switch them out). These give you a lot of flexibility to make sure that whatever the situation on your island currently is, you have full control of what boon you want to use.

 

The departments you can unlock over time

Of course,
it would not be Anno if there was not also a logistical element to it all- these boons only work in a certain radius around the palace, and only along the street network (though only the palace main building has to be connected to the streets, rather than every module). And, to bring everything full circle and ensure that future palace builders will have to make some tough choices, the radius of these effects increases with each additional palace module constructed. Do you want a minimal palace to leave as much room as possible for the rest of your city? Or are you looking to construct enough modules to have the effects of your policies reach across all of Crown Falls? As always, the choice is yours!

There is one more piece of the palace puzzle, and that is the local department. These are essentially outposts of the palace that you can construct once per Old World or Cape Trelawney island to select a single policy (out of al your unlocked departments and policies) to enact locally. Beyond this limitation, local departments follow the same rules as the main palace- they give a passive buff (based on the active policy you selected), and buildings must be both within their radius and connected to the street network to benefit from them. And yes- more palace modules also increase the range of the local departments. Happy city-puzzling, everyone!

 

What choices will you make for your islands?

Start ruling from March 24

And there you have it! Seat of Power combines a lot of flexibility for building the modular palace of your dreams with some tough choices when it comes to which buff to select for which island and local department. On top of that, you can prove your mastery with five new achievements, and two new sets of ornaments you can unlock with the Ubisoft Club. You can start constructing the “Seat of Power” of your dreams when the first DLC of Season 2 becomes available on March 24th for all Season 2 Pass owners. Starting on that day, you can also buy the DLC individually for 9,99€/ $, or your local equivalent. However, please note that due to the current government advisory on the Covid-19 pandemic, we will have to skip our traditional release stream for “Seat of Power”. Please take care of yourself and the people around you, and as always, keep an eye on the Anno Union for the latest news.

 

An illuminated palace at midnight

 

DevBlog: The Passage

Posted on by Bastian Thun

DevBlog: The Passage

 

Dearest Elaine,
I’ve few breaths left. I die never having found a Passage, but then no glory awaits any servant of Sir John. He was certain the ice would not thicken around us in Spring. Fate of expedition now rests on circumnavigation of Terrier Island by short, perilous west shore, or by long, open east channel— fear I know what Sir John will prefer.
Farewell my Elaine.

The frozen north, a final frontier many felt it was their destiny to conquer, whether in the name of science, or for fame and riches. The “Northwest Passage” was a fabled sea route through the Arctic that promised to connect opposite sides of the Northern Hemisphere, conferring great wealth upon anyone brave enough to take an expedition deep into the ice.

From lush jungles to the frozen wastes – A chilling change of scenery
Our third and biggest Season Pass DLC, “The Passage,” tells a story of bravery and hardship, inspired by the valiant souls who risked their life in the name of progress, and tasks you to establish an outpost in the Arctic Circle. The sight of the eerie and beautiful wilderness invites everyone to follow in the footsteps of the Arctic explorers of the 19th century, while seasoned Anno players can look forward to an exciting challenge with a worthy payoff at the end.

 

The Arctic biome is a welcome change to the milder climate of the Old World and the hot and humid islands in the New World. Frozen shores under a dark sky, this barren wasteland allows us to tell a different kind of tale than you might be used to in Anno 1800™, and the harsh weather conditions offer interesting new gameplay elements. Our goal was that conquering the Arctic session should be an exciting endeavor as it will require you to rethink your strategies, away from raising big cities to carefully maintaining an outpost in a seemingly hostile environment.

The new campaign chapter of The Passage will send you on a rescue mission of an Arctic expedition. Inspired by the events of the Franklin Expedition, searching for Sir John and his crew will unfold a dramatic series of events with an unclear outcome.

We need to keep our people warm – managing an Arctic outpost
With much potential for striking visuals and room for interesting gameplay additions, we knew that the Arctic biome would be a perfect opportunity to play around with new gameplay mechanics. The new region should be an exciting adventure for everyone but a true challenge for achievers who want to conquer the wasteland in order to reap significant rewards.

Harsh weather conditions are your dire enemy in the north and the new heating mechanic will challenge you to rethink the way you used to create layouts in order to keep your residents warm and healthy. The two new residential tiers, explorers and technicians, are audacious adventurers who, in the name of progress, turned their back to the amenities and comfort of the modern city life.

 

While their population needs reflect rather pragmatic necessities, the wasteful luxury goods got replaced by the much more urgent need for heat. Residential buildings as well as production facilities need to be connected to a heat source to function properly, with the new category of goods providing additional ways of keeping your residents warm and heathy. The new heaters serve here as the foundation, radiators which allow you to provide a basic level of heat for every building in the vicinity. Like the electric power plant, it automatically places heat pipes along the street network, and thus is relying on street distance rather than a radius. But as its effectiveness is limited, maintaining and expanding your outpost becomes a jigsaw puzzle of proper space and heat management.

The Northern Hemisphere is an icy wasteland, and construction space, as well as basic resources, are sparse. Heaters operate by burning coal, which is hard to come by and requires you to construct charcoal kilns in the sparsely populated woods on islands located on the south or to import coal from the Old World all the way back to your Arctic outpost.
New goods such as sleeping bags or parkas will provide an additional source of comfort and thus let the heat meter rise. If you won’t be able to connect buildings to a heater, or if your fuel support falters, goods can provide a sufficient level of heat depending how well you can or want to supply your Arctic residents.
But with decreasing temperatures, the risk for a dreaded disease rises: The Arctic Flu. Similar to the illness in the Old World at first glance, the Arctic Flu is a much more dire opponent for your residents due to the harsh living conditions in the North. It spreads faster, is more resilient and has the potential to not only paralyze your fickle northern infrastructure but will also take its toll on your Arctic population. So keep your toes warm to avoid a nasty surprise in the morning.

Adapted to the permafrost – new buildings and production chains
Other than constructing heaters,your outpost will give you access to several new buildings and production chains adapted to the life up north. The Ranger Station will not only keep an eye out for fires in your outpost, it also provides medical support for your sick explorers, while the Canteen serves as a social gathering hub but also replaces the marketplace by issuing food and other goods. The Post Office is a new cultural need, allowing your researchers to stay in contact with their friends and families back home.
Population needs are as pragmatic as the fight against the freezing temperatures. To support your researchers with a steady supply of jerky, hunting cabins send out rangers to hunt for caribous, whale oil fuels your brass lamps and bear and seal pelts allow you to produce parkas and sleeping bags. But it is hard to survive up there without help from the Old World, and you will need to import canned food provisions and, as you can imagine, Arctic explorers don’t like if their schnapps flask runs dry.

 

To keep things going, your technicians found a new way of transportation for your snow-covered streets: the husky sled. Your trusty four-legged companions serve not only as a need for your technicians, they also provide satisfying visual feedback in your outpost.
Over time, your outpost will grow, and what seems like a barren wasteland for us is called home by others. The Inuit, a new third-party trader, are willing to trade when your stock runs low, as well as offer a variety of new items especially useful in the Northern Hemisphere.

As soon as you overcome the struggle and the daily life on the ice becomes normality, you will find that the Arctic also has plenty to offer. The North can become a profitable hunting ground for precious pelts and there are some especially rich gold deposits, which promise a more efficient supply of the rare metal than your mines in the New World. You will also be able to collect new sets for your museum and your zoo to allow your residents back home to get a grasp of this strange and wild place.

But you are not alone, as news about the natural resources spread quickly and as such, second-party characters will follow you on your path into the Passage to start their own settlements.

Conquering the sky – the Airship Hangar
For the ones overcoming the challenges of the hostile environment, a big payoff awaits: the Airship! Inspired by actual historical efforts to building zeppelins in the Arctic to avoid the brash ice, the Airship Hangar is the new monument coming with The Passage. Building this technical marvel will be a huge undertaking, as it requires you to import a lot of construction material from your larger cities in the South in order to finish the four construction stages of the monument. Once you finish the Airship Hangar, of which you will be able to build one in every Arctic settlement, you can start to construct your first airship.

 

Airships are the ultimate endgame vessel for your trade routes, but they are costly to construct. It not only takes a long time to build one, you also need a new resource to fill their balloons during construction: gas. While your old companion Nate happily supports your first prototype with a shipment of gas, the resource itself exists only in the northern region of the Arctic: to be precise, on barren ice cliffs. Without any real beach for ships to land, and missing any fundamental resources to construct a settlement, these islands are out of reach for any traditional vessel. If you dream of your own fleet of airships, you must claim the icy cliffs and establish your mining outposts with the help of an airbridge.

Airships can safely avoid pirates, and can take direct routes just over islands instead of slowly maneuvering around them. They have also a total of 4 cargo and 2 item slots. However, they are also more strongly affected by wind, and their unloading and loading process naturally takes more time than with a traditional ship.

But airships are not the only new addition to optimize your endgame logistics. Once transported into the Old World, the gas comes in handy if you build one of the new progressive gas powerplants. More effective than their oil-running cousins, the gas powerplant can operate without relying on trains to constantly feed their burners. If you can establish a trade route ensuring a steady supply of gas, the new powerplant can free up important space in your metropolis. But beware: as the gas is a rare resource, you probably must make tough decisions where it makes most sense to replace your old oil plants.

And while talking about technical progress, your scientific endeavors inspired our old friend Nate to work in new inventions, which will expand the crafting list for items you are not limited to use in the Arctic session.

An adventure of epic proportion awaits
The Passage is not only our biggest DLC yet, it is also a true passion project from the team. From the atmosphere, to the details to the amount of content coming with the final Season Pass content, we are eager to see how you like our adventure into the frozen wilds. With hundreds of Union members playtesting the content, it is also a true community project and shows how much influence you continue to have on Anno 1800 and its extended content.

Our third Season Pass DLC, The Passage, will release December 10th along with Game Update 6. The Passage expands the content of Anno 1800 with:
– A new Arctic gameplay session
– Rescue Sir Johns crew in a new story chapter for Anno 1800
– 2 new Residential Tiers: the Explorers and the Technicians
– 32 new Buildings, 7 new production chains and 13 new production goods
– Over 60 new quests
– Fight the cold with the new heating systems
– Construct your airship trade fleet in the new Airship Hangar monument

Until next time, when we will share the full list of changes and free content coming with Game Update 6!

 

DevBlog: Day & Night

Posted on by Bastian Thun

The invention of the light bulb was more than a mere boon to comfort and luxury. This new way of illuminating the darkness was also an inspiring force for creative minds and a motor for the industry, unshackling them from the natural rhythm of day and night. With electricity playing such an important role in Anno 1800’s economy, there was a strong desire from our community to have a true day and night cycle in the game. Finally, this wish became reality with Game Update 4. As the days are getting ever shorter, what better time to shine a light on this major visual update than in today’s DevBlog!

 

A true passion project for the players – the beginnings

Since the early days of development, we had been toying with the idea to add a day & night cycle to Anno 1800, similar to the one from 2205. In reality, game development often means throwing a lot of ideas onto a wall and then deciding which ones may be a crucial must-have features, while others end up on a potential “nice to have later” list. While the day & night originally did not make the cut, many Union members told us repeatedly that they would love to see a return of that feature to the series.

Therefore, when some members of our art team had a bit of time available after launch, they immediately set out to realize this previously scraped idea from the early days of Anno 1800. This plan was quickly validated by the modding community jumping on the topic, which showed the big interest in having this functionality in Anno 1800.

 

 

Let there be light – developing the Day & Night feature

As is often the case, our artists are perfectionists once they have their hearts set on a topic.So it was clear from the get-go that an official day & night cycle could not simply be about adding a dark night, and sun and moon cycles. Instead, almost every asset players can build would have to be reworked to make sure they look their best, no matter the time of day. Ranging from new glowing textures for illuminated windows to tons of new light sources to ships sailing the nocturnal oceans, we added over 1000 new light sources and changed more than 200 existing assets to provide the intended ambience during the night.

We also had to ensure that the new light sources would start shining during specific times of the day and account for the additional gloom of our dusk and sunset scenarios. In the 19th century, cityscapes started to change drastically with the introduction of the lightbulb. We depicted this in the game world with a more blueish tint to our electric light sources, as opposed to the warmer, yellowish light of candles and fireplaces; this way, a heavily industrialized metropolis will look and feel notably different from a rural hamlet’s atmosphere.

 

Here you can see how we manually setup a new light source!

Our modern cities are awash with artificial light during the night but back then, they were comparatively sparsely illuminated. Once more, we decided for a tradeoff: we wanted to create an appealing contrast to the darkness while we also did not want to outright dismiss that feeling of a gone century in the midst of transformation into the modern world.

Players would also expect that their city would appear much quieter during the night, but Anno’s cityscapes are normally famously bustling with life. As a result, we had to send our feedback units through another development pass, where we had to reduce the overall amount of residents following their daily business while again, adding and altering light sources. As a result, the streets are less crowded during the late hours. You may also notice some other subtle changes, such as removing the kids from the schoolyard during the night or adding more musicians to the pub to let it appear livelier in the after work hours.

 

Our tools allowed us to precisely define the tinting of each time of day.

Finally but crucially, we wanted to give the player full control over the scenery. For that, we had to program the functionality to allow them to change the time of day at their convenience or to go for one of our presets, such as daylight, dusk, dawn or midnight. While we decided to make the night hours shorter than the actual day for gameplay convenience, players would also be able to decide to stop the cycle altogether to enjoy their sunset for as long as they like.

 

It’s not always style over substance – Impact on Gameplay

While changing hundreds of assets manually was a huge albeit worthwhile task, there was more to it than just adding another layer of visual fidelity.
In a game like Anno, readability is an important factor to provide a satisfying gameplay experience.

While various tooltips and windows help you to keep an overview about events in your empire, the game also transmits a lot of information through visual feedback happening in your city. A night setting naturally makes it much harder to read what is going on, which necessitated the addition of all these new light sources to make sure that you could still identify all buildings, and not lose track of your ships.

 

We also played around with ideas how the shift from day to the midst of the night could affect gameplay, and while it would open many possibilities, we realized that doing so would simply add a lot of unnecessary micromanagement, without actually benefiting the overall game experience and player fantasy.

 

Day & Night, a joint effort

While we have primarily talked about our artists, the day & night update was a collaborative effort from the whole Anno team, drawing on all disciplines from art and engine R&D (research and development) to programming and interface. Judging by the countless of majestically lighted nocturnal cityscapes we have seen online, we are very happy with the results of this effort, and hope you agree as well.

What is your preferred time of day for your empire? And do you make extensive active use of the options available, or do you just roll with the natural rhythm of night and day? Let us know in the comments below!