After taking a trip into the year 1602 last week, this week calls for adventures in 1503 – new islands want to be settled!
Ubi-Thorlof and Ubi-Trenchcoat are facing each other again in the multiplayer mode of the second game of the Anno series – and they’re bringing gifts! Like last week, you’ll have the chance to win a key for the complete Anno History Collection.
Of course more streams for the remaining games of the History Collection are planned and we have a few ideas on how to spice things up a bit.
If you have feedback to past livestreams or suggestions for future ones – let us know! Are there “special guests” you’d like to see on the show or is there a specific format you wish to see, for example another stream where we’re looking at savegames from the community? Write it in the comments.
In other news…
And when we’re already talking about the History Editions: Our team us currently working on the second update for the Anno History Collection. We will soon share more details with you.
Finally, don’t forget we just announced the Technical Test for Land of Lions and Game Update 9. If you want to help us test the last big update of Season 2, sign up for the test!
Hello dear Anno Community and welcome to the first Union Update on our shiny new website! We have several great news for you, so let's get started right away.
Welcome to the new Anno Union
Since Monday the now almost 3 years old Anno Union presents itself in a new, sleeker look. The new website provides several advantages like faster loading times, better optimisation for mobile devices and better support for more than just one game of the Anno series.
You might still see some issues with the layout here and there but we wanted to launch the website now to support the launch of the History Editions and get some feedback from you on the design.
Let us know and share your thoughts in the comments below the announcement.
Game Updates 1.1 for the History Editions
Talking about the History Editions: Thank you for your valuable feedback, your questions and the reports of a few issues with this re-release. Our team is currently investigating these reports and we can already announce a first patch for this week which will address several points on all 4 History Edition games like the language issue on the Steam version of the Anno 1404, the music problem when increasing the game speed in Anno 1503 and more.
We will have more details for you soon.
Currently still under investigation is for example the Anno 1404 History Edition using DirectX 9 instead of newer versions as well as other issues forwarded to us.
As with all Anno 1800 Game Updates before, you will be able to find all patch notes for the History Editions in the “Updates” section.
For the modders – a safe GUID range
As you know, we continue to being impressed and appreciate the work some our community members put into creating mods for Anno 1800. To make it a little bit easier for you when it comes to adjusting your mods to new Game Updates, we now reserved the GUID range 1337471142 to 2147483647 just for you. This range is “safe” and not used by us.
A nostalgic Anno Afternoon live stream
After a longer break, the Anno team is back with a History Edition live stream!
Ubi-Thorlof invites you to a slightly improvised Anno 1602 home office stream, joined by his colleagues Ubi-Hanabi and Ubi-Trenchcoat. To share your Anno 1602 stories and memories and get the chance to win a key for the complete Anno History Collection, tune in this Thursday at 6PM CEST over on twitch.tv/ubisoftbluebyte
End of October, we invited the Anno Union to go with us on an expedition to test the waters of the upcoming DLC The Passage as well as Game Update 6. Over the last couple of weeks, hundreds of Union members tested the upcoming content inside out and provided a huge amount of valuable feedback and reports. After weeks of analyzing your feedback and working on improvements and polishing, it’s now time to break the silence and open the doors of our testing vault, sharing the next steps for the Union and the upcoming content for Anno 1800.
AnnoAfternoon: The Sunken Dragon – Friday 22.11 at 5PM CET After barely escaping a burning city with their settlers, Community Manager Oli and Anno veteran Wolfgang are looking for a new home in Anno 1701. And wasn’t there also something about a mysterious artefact…?
AnnoCast: The Passage – Wednesday 27.11 at 5pm – 7pm CET Don’t forget to pack your parka as it is about to get cold. We thought “Show don’t tell” is the best approach and therefore, we will bring you the next AnnoCast already next week! Join us on an adventure to our arctic outpost to see the Passage and Game Update 6 (this includes a lot of sweet statistics) in action while we answer your most burning questions. You really don’t want to miss this one, as we plan to have a bunch of developers on camera in this almost two-hour long episode.
AnnoAfternoon: “In den kalten Norden” – German Episode – Friday 29.11 at 5pm CET And right after our developer stream, our community team will follow up with a new stream, this time with a special German episode in the frozen wasteland. So not only a good chance to take a look at the Passage after our developer stream, the team is eager to answer your questions or pass your feedback on to the developers.
And as we love that outside window from our studio into the outside window, we are always eager for feedback about our content. Give the channel a follow if you don’t want to miss any future episodes.
Union Talk Episode 4 With the Anno Union, we invited you all to help us developing the next big Anno game. And in that spirit, we love to share as many development insights as possible. In the now fourth episode of our developer podcast, we talk about the postlaunch journey of Anno 1800, conceptions and misconceptions about developing content after the big release and how we continue to work with your input and feedback.
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And as this is a passion project from the development team for the Union, let us know if you would love to see more Union Talks in future and feel free to share your opinion on the topic matter of the latest podcast.
We will also drop new DevBlog’s in the upcoming weeks, where we talk about the development and show gameplay elements of the Passage as well as Game Update 6. Keep a keen eye on the Union for upcoming blogs and of course, we will soon share when The Passage and GU6 lands on your PC.
Annoverse Discord Roundtable Monday 25.11 at 7pm CET And because feedback and communication matters, our Community Developer Basti and Community Manager Oli join another round of the Annoverse Discord Roundtable. The Roundtable is an AMA session in our Anno Fandiscord, where everyone can join asking us anything while the team answers your questions in Voice Chat, if it is development or community related.
The Annoverse Discord is an great meetup place for great Annoholics new and old and we want to say thank you for the continues community support and for the hosting of the Roundtables. In that vein, we strongly encourage you to jump in the Discord yourself, as you will find hundreds of like minded Annoholics there to chat about anything Anno (and more)!
And that was it for this weeks Update but as you can see, it was mere the beginning. You can look forward to a lot of new and insightful content in the upcoming weeks to get you all prepared for journey into the frozen north – Winter is coming, after all!
Once again we want to share a community update with you, showcase some great Anno 1800 impressions from our community and let you know about our streaming plans. Let’s go!
Anno Afternoon Stream – Retro Edition
This Friday, we’re changing things up with the Anno Afternoon. After noticing that Ubi-Thorlof has never played Ubi-Trenchcoat’s favourite game of the series – Anno 1701 – they spontaneously decided to do a retro stream! Tune in on the 8th at 4PM UTC (5PM CET) when they’ll be diving into the The Sunken Dragon campaign.
Playtest und Game Update 6.0
The Game Update 6.0 playtest has started last week and is going very well. A big thank you to everyone who already provided their feedback in the dedicated forums. If you haven’t already – let us know your thoughts!
And if you have signed up for the playtest but haven’t received an invite yet: Do not worry. We will send another wave of invites in the coming week.
Parallel to the test our team continues their work on the Update including the third DLC, coming out in December. We will share more information regarding all the features and a precise date closer to release.
Community Spotlight
Let’s again round things up by featuring some the cities you built and the experiences you shared.
ClassicReddltor is extremely happy about finally getting the Extravaganza Steamer, posing in front of his massive city. How many of you already managed to get hold of this proud ship?
For friends of grapes and champagne, a visit to Conschbourg – the Green City – might be a good idea. Spacer176 also provides you with a tourist guide and a history lesson of this town.
If you’re more of a fan cities, you should probably plan a trip to DerGrindelwutz’s and RegalSeagull’s versions of Crown Falls. With plenty of parks, promenades along the river islands and bridges in front of the waterfall panorama, these cities simply invite you to take a long walk.
As a stark contrast to these peaceful views, cjnewson88 seems to have a few issues with his rioting populace.
But he later explains his city setup and the strategy behind his success – well worth a read.
That’s already it for this week’s Union Update!
Feel free to share your adventures and achievements with us on social or reddit and don’t forget to tune in to tomorrow’s stream.
We’re back once more with a community update and some info on what to expect from us in the near future.
Anno Afternoon Stream
This Friday, Seraxia and Thorlof will put their creative hats on (most likely not literally) in another Anno Afternoon and try something completely different. You want to know more? Then don’t miss out this special livestream episode and tune on the 25th at 4PM UTC+1 (5PM CEST).
And if you got any cool or funny ideas for future streams, what better opportunity to share them with us than this Friday?
Playtest beginning next week!
As you all know the next playtest is just around the corner and as we work together with the community to get a jam-packed Game Update 6 ready for December, we will take a short break from Union blogs in the upcoming week. But worry not, we will be back soon with community news and new game information.
And we already got some exciting news this week! Keep an eye on your inbox, cause for a first wave of players the the playtest will already start next week – more invite-waves will follow.
We’re very much looking forward to your feedback. So, when we’re already talking about GU6 and The Passage, why not hop over to Reddit. Some of you already started a discussion about the content of the DLC there. We might have some theories ourselves but it’s far more exciting to read your predictions. Which features and production chains do YOU think will be added with The Passage?
Community Content
Something that impressed all of us quite a bit was jasperwillem not only managing to get this settlement to house Engineers without ever visiting the New World but shortly after also luring Investors into ‘Golden City’.
How many of us spent long nights outsourcing production chains and setting up new trade routes. Or planting hedge rows for hours for that perfect inner-city park or the world’s best botanical garden. We bet there are some quirky challenges or legendary achievements you set yourself in the past or future. So, share them with us in the comments below!
Fitting to last week’s blog about the Day & Night Cycle, we also want to use this blog to share some impressions from the community. Apparently some of you have a weird fascination with exploding factories…but admittedly, fires look very cool at night:
That’s it for this Community Update. Did you already share your favourite moments with us? Be it day or night, dusk or dawn, we always love to see what fantastic scenes you manage to capture.
We are currently testing the content of the new DLC “Sunken Treasures” with a selected group of players from the Anno Union and will provide the exciting details about the big update and the DLC in an upcoming DevBlog and AnnoCast livestream.
We have started to implement a few changes to the Anno Union page, which should it make easier for you to keep track of all our Anno 1800 updates (and soon upcoming content).
In the top menu, you will now find a new category called “Game Updates”. Hovering over the category will give you a drop-down including pages for all of our Game Update notes.
For our latest round of the Community Corner AMA stream, many of you followed the call once more and the result are two hours full of fun, gamedev insights and answers to your questions.
But behold: the next streams are on the horizon. This Friday, we bring back our Anno Afternoon stream with Ubi Guddy and Ubi John, this time with 100% more anarchy and backseat gaming. Beside community streams, we will also return with our AnnoCast development show later in July.
Anno Afternoon – Right into Anarchy! Friday 5th of July at 4pm CEST Watch it live on: twitch.tv/ubisoftbluebyte
We were amazed by the amount of videos, the level of quality and crazy ideas behind some of your City Promotion Contest submissions. Dr. Hugo Mercier would be proud of you, or depending on your message, truly offended. Deciding for our favorite three entries was an incredibly tough choice. We want to encourage everyone in the Union to check out all the entries of the contest and we will continue to put your contributions into the limelight of our social media channels.
Without further ado, let’s lift the curtain on the winners of our big City Promotion contest.
Combining a speech inspired by Charlie Chaplin’s best performance with powerful visuals of a sprawling 19th century metropolis and industry was a truly moving experience. Radlerauge created a strong message not only for fans of the Anno series, which relates to the world back then, of today and probably of tomorrow. The video has English subtitles available!
Second Place – Tutadventures – The Anarchist Competition Film
This one took us by surprise: a skillfuly executed blend of real life camera footage, 3D animation and game footage. Short, powerful and impressive, Tutadventures’ movie managed to become one of the team’s favorites.
Third Place – BixelBG – Island Propaganda Weekly News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shiuBH_Gh8c
A fittingly classy one-pager, hot off the press of Bixel Daily News, gave us ideas for future contests or even a whole section of community contributed Anno news articles. The best in the west, surely worth more than 2 cents.
We could only pick three winners but we won’t end the contest without one honorable mention, even though every single entry deserves attention. Our Honorable Mention goes to: Lord_Janok – Stadt Propaganda
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6KsefafJwk
Once again, Lord Janok died his best in displaying true passion for the series. A great speech combined with stunning city backdrops, well done Lord Janok!
We will soon get in contact with the winners of the contest to send them their Gaming Gear sponsored by our friends at Corsair.
And until we are back with another contest, what kind of competition would you love to see us doing here in the Anno Union?
While we work on the upcoming game update 3.2 as well as the next content drop, which will enrich Anno 1800’s game world quite significantly, we have a few things in today’s Union Update to endure the waiting time until we lift the curtain on the content and when it lands.
Anarchist Propa….promotional video contest ends this Friday! Our creative contest, in which you can submit your own promotional video for your empire, ends this Friday. Still two night shifts worth of time to let your empire shine! Remember: We have not only great gaming gear from Corsair for the top three winners, we will also give you a spot in the limelight, sharing your creative works on the Anno Union, social media and during live-streams.
Fansite Kit 1.0 has landed. We released our first teaser of our Anno 1800 fansite kit a while ago and today, we want to share the first release version of our kit with the Anno Union. With the first release version, we added all of our detailed key-arts as wallpapers for various devices, including an anniversary wallpaper as well as a set of emoticons free to use on your platform of choice.
Is there something directly missing in our fansite kit which you would love to see in future or even something useful or just awesome the community created which we should add?
With the latest Game Update 3.1, we continue to work on various game improvements as well as upcoming gameplay content. Throughout the year, Anno 1800 will receive several further game updates and various DLC additions not only from our Season Pass content but also free content updates such as a coop mode, statistic building and more. We know that you are waiting for details when you will be able to start the hunt for lost treasures or to team up with your friends to create your mega-empire. With the Anno Union, we are committed to work with your feedback but that also means that our team spends time to analyze the tons of data you provide with your reports and your discussion on the forums and on other community platforms. The journey just started and a vast and feature rich game like Anno 1800 deserves the time and care to grow based on your feedback.
We also want to tackle reports about a few players still having issues with progressing through campaign quests or multiplayer desynchs. We will share the exact update notes about Game Update 3.2 and the release date pretty-soon. After 3.2, we will fully focus on the next larger content drop: game Update 4.
But until we share some dates for upcoming content, we want to ramp up conversations with all of you. And to get us all on the table, we invite you to share your most pressing questions in the comments below for the next two episodes of our community corner live-streams.
To give every one of you a chance to get your questions answered, we decided to not only rely on our live-stream chat but also gather questions for the stream here in the Union. This way, you might be able see the response to your personal question in the recorded broadcast if you cannot make it to watch the show live.
Save the date for our next Anno 1800 stream on twitch.tv/ubisoftbluebyte Community Corner German: Tuesday June 25th 4.30pm CEST Community Corner English: Wednesday July 3rd 4.30pm CEST
We are looking forward to the show and your questions in the comments below.
Dr. Hugo Mercier just arrived in the world of Anno 1800, bringing with him not only a lot of new content for owners of the Digital Deluxe Edition, but also the free Game Update with its more than 200 improvements to the game.
Owners of the Anno 1800 Pioneers Edition or Digital Deluxe Edition can now include the Anarchist, who comes with new content such as 50 additional quests and items as well as new propaganda and a defection system, as a second party character when creating a new sandbox game.
And if you don’t want to miss out on Mercier, owners of the Standard Edition can also upgrade to the Digital Deluxe version to get access to the DLC as well as digital items such as the soundtrack and additional company emblems.
But there is more: Just in time for Game Update 3 and the Anarchist, you can save 20% on your Uplay purchase of Anno 1800’s Standard and Digital Deluxe Edition, thanks to the Ubisoft E3 Sale! If you have been on the fence, now is the perfect time to dive into the industrial revolution!
And in celebration of Mercier’s arrival, we also invite you all to participate in our new City Promotion Contest! Together with our friends of Corsair, we ask you to create a video to promote your metropolis.
Here are the rules: – No time limitations but it must be at least 15 seconds long. – It should include gameplay content – Additionally, you can use video footage of yourself, text mockups or other graphics, audio effects or anything you can think of. Get crazy! – It must be a retro style promotion of your city, such as a nice invitation for tourists to visit your city or a full-blown propaganda piece demonstrating that your empire is the one to rule them all! – Deadline is June 21, and you can link your submissions in the City Promotion thread in the forum or via Twitter mentioning @Anno_EN and the hashtag #Anno1800Anarchy
So what’s at stake? For the best three entries of the contest, you can win top gaming gear from Corsair to stay ahead of the competition. 1st Place: K70 RGB MK.2 Keyboard Low Profile 2nd Place: GLAIVE RGB Gaming Mouse 3rd Place: MM800 Pro Mousepad
Good luck everyone!
Yesterday, we hosted another session of our Community Corner live-stream, a streaming format where we showcase content while also answering your questions. If you missed the show, you can watch the VOD here:
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And to follow up on questions from the stream, here are the
answers:
Question: Do the new sea mines cause
friendly fire when blowing up, causing damage to your or allied ships? Answer: Sea mines are not causing
damage to your own or allied/neutral ships. In Anno 1800, where you have a
variety of neutral or allied characters and the game world is heavily used for
trade by all these factions, friendly fire could cause many issues affecting
the player’s enjoyment. Harbor areas would be inaccessible and players would
likely soon stop using the item, as the chances of entering an unintended state
of war with the AI or damaging their own ship would be too high. However, even
without friendly fire, the sea mines add a lot of strategical variety to the
naval combat, allowing you to expand your harbor defense or to blockade areas
of the map.
Question: If I wipe Dr. Hugo Mercier
from the map, will I lose access to all his items and propaganda news articles? Answer: If you wipe the Anarchist
from your map, you will not have any access to his item pool anymore nor able
to use his propaganda articles. When the music is over, turn off the lights.
Annoholics, we’re live here at EGX Rezzed in London, where you are able to play Anno 1800 shortly before launch. Come and visit us at our booth. We won’t bite! It’s been a pleasure so far and we are looking forward to meet you guys.
If you are not able to be in London in person don’t worry! We will stream this afternoon and you are welcome to join us online! Watch the Anno 1800 panel from EGX Rezzed in London LIVE at 5pm CET/ 4pm GMT.
UPDATE: The panel has ended. You can watch the Stream here:
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Welcome to another week in the Anno Union, this time with an introduction to the cast of Anno 1800 second party characters as well as an update to the streaming schedule.
Meet your rivals! Originally planned for the end of last week, we prepared a video for you showcasing the variety of AI opponents which will be able to choose as your dire enemy or future to be ally.
Every single rival will have their own character, which will not only define their general difficulty rating but also influence their playstyle.
Since the Closed Beta, we improved their behaviour in many ways and while old chap Willy will remain let’s say, a slow and simple fella, the AI’s capabilities of defending islands or deciding on various tactics fitting to the situation has improved a lot. As an example, especially war savvy characters will make decisions such as attacking your Harbour directly, engaging your war fleet or launching attacks on your trading routes based on the current situation.
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Are you looking forward to testing your skills in naval warfare against the Psychopath Graves or are you more interested in Tea parties with Bente Jorgensen? We are curious to know how important the second party opponents are for you and if you are more the player who likes to challenge themselves with the most fierce of opponents?
Streaming Schedule– 2 streams on the horizon!
As promised during our special German episode of our Community Corner last week, we will have another English episode this week Wednesday at 5pm CET.
While we won’t have a special guest this time, our Community Developer Bastian will not only give you further insights into the fourth tier but also answering your chat questions.
And as one stream is not enough, our Anno Afternoon community crew will return this Friday 5pm CET – Not only Guddy is back on board, we will also jump from the trusty old Closed Beta ship to a newer development version of the game!
We plan to bring you more live-streams in future, from development insights with our AnnoCasts to community focused shows like CommunityCorner and AnnoAfternoon.
If you do not want to miss a show, make sure to follow out twitch channel to receive notifications as soon as we are online.
