Tag: Union Update

Try Anno 1800 for free until August 25 and discover the new Day & Night Cycle!

Posted on by Bastian Thun

Experience the Industrial Revolution and Be the First to Test the New Day & Night Cycle during the Anno 1800 Free Week!

Today, we announced that Anno 1800 will be free to play for the occasion of gamescom 2019. Until August 25*, players will be able to get a first glimpse at the upcoming day & night cycle free update, releasing on September 10 for all the players. In addition, the second DLC of the game, Botanica, will also release on September 10 as part of the Season Pass.

 

Starting today until August 25* players can play for free Anno 1800 on Uplay and the Epic Games Store. The free trial includes the first three tiers of the sandbox mode along with the multiplayer mode. In addition, players will be able to try out for the first time the upcoming day & night cycle and enjoy the beauty of their city by night, to be released as a free update for every Anno 1800 player on September 10.

 

For Anno players who already own the game, please keep in mind that while the Day & Night cycle will be coming to the full game as a free update on September 10, you can only try it next week as part of the Free Week version. If you want to see the content before it comes out, we recommend to download the free version to check out the upcoming content update.

On September 10, Season pass holders will discover Botanica, the second DLC of Anno 1800. Players will be able to grow their city’s attractiveness to new heights with a modular Botanical Garden, allowing them to earn new items and rewards as they draw the tourist masses to their floral masterpiece. Alternatively, they will be able to construct the new Musical Pavilion and enjoy beloved tracks from previous Anno games inside their city.

Beyond that, we are happy to give you a first small teaser at our third DLC, The Passage, which is coming this Winter, and will allow you to construct your very own trading airships!

 

https://youtu.be/XN9WH6h8e9U

Click here to play Anno 1800 for free this week!

*The Free Trial ends on August 26, 9am CEST

 

With the possibilities of a magical night, what better time to start a new creative contest! Together with the Free Trial, we ask you to share your wonderful screenshots with us.

And here are the rules:
– Share your #AnnoDayNight screenshot with us on Social Media or in our dedicated Ubisoft forum thread: Link.

– The deadline is August 26, and we will announce the winners in an upcoming Union Update.

And here are prices, sponsored to bring light into your gaming room by our friends at Corsair:

1st price: Nightsword RGB gaming mouse, MM800 RGB mousepad, ST100 RGB headset stand

2nd price: Nightsword RGB gaming mouse, MM800 RGB mousepad

3rd price: Nightsword RGB gaming mouse

And on top of that, we throw in one new exclusive Anno 1800 gamescom shirt as a surprise…. good luck and let there be (star)light!

 

Legal note:

*This software is a free demo of Anno 1800, playable from August 19th, 2019 10pm CEST to August 26th, 2019 9am CEST. This demo is provided AS-IS, may not contain the same content as the full/final game, may not function as expected, and may crash. Please note that maintenance may also occur at any time during this period, rendering you unable to access parts or all of the demo. Ubisoft does not commit to providing customer support for the demo.

Union Update: gamescom 2019

Posted on by Bastian Thun

Once a year at gamescom, hundreds of thousands of gamers from across the globe come together to celebrate games in Cologne. And once more, we want to invite all Annoholics out there to join our Community Corner sessions in the Ubisoft Lounge and to get a first glimpse of upcoming content.

The Ubisoft Lounge, which is located in the Ubisoft area in Hall 6, is our own dedicated community space where once a day, Anno fans come together to discuss all things Anno with our Community Developer, Bastian Thun. Alongside our daily stage presentations, you can rest assured that we will have some news to share with all of you!

We are looking forward to seeing many of you at gamescom 2019, as there is no advance registration to the Lounge sessions required (though we recommend to arrive early, as space is limited).

And when you are there, don’t forget to share your #Anno1800 #gamescom2019 moments with us (and the community) on Social Media!

 

Union Update: Twitch Drop Event

Posted on by Bastian Thun

With July 30 less than a week away, the release of our first big Season Pass DLC „Sunken Treasures“ draws ever closer. Because of that, we want to talk about our upcoming “Sunken Treasures” Twitch Drop Event!

 

During the Event, which starts this Friday July 26, you will be able to watch how a variety of select Twitch Streamers explore Cape Trelawney and dive deep to retrieve lost treasures. But getting a preview of the upcoming content is not enough, as watchers of the streams will be able to unlock two exclusive billboard ornaments for their Anno 1800 game.

The only thing you need to do is to watch one of the selected channels playing Anno 1800 for a set amount of time while having your Uplay account linked to your Twitch account. And if you haven’t done so yet, you can check on how to link your accounts here: Ubisoft Twitch Drop FaQ

If you entertain yourself with Anno 1800 during the event for one hour, you will get the „Anarchy“ Billboard ornament and if you binge a channel for three hours, you will obtain the „Sunken Treasures“ Billboard to beautify your city.

You can find the full list of all participating Streamer here:
ValleGaming (German)
monstersandexplosions (German)
writing_bull (German)
Baso (German)
AnniTheDuck (German)
Caaaaate (English)
HeyChrissa (English)
Mathia (Dutch)
Midnan (Dutch)
Achterklap (Dutch)
Koinsky (French)
Scok (French)
EasterGamersTV (Turkish)
Chiches (Spanish)
rockalone (Polish)
losiugra (Polish)
urqueeen (Polish)

 

 

Union Update: Battle of the Ages

Posted on by Ubi-Guddy

The Battle of the Ages

Annoholics living in North America will have the chance to participate in one of the most epic battles of the ages for life and death schnapps and wool.

 

Eight YouTubers will join the battle to compete against each other and to build the most impressive city Anno has ever seen. But they won’t do this on their own – you might be the partner in crime!

And these are the Head-to-Head YouTube Teams

 

  • Oompaville vs. MattShea
  • BunnyFuFuu vs. Professor Akali
  • BaronVonGames vs. Ohmwrecker
  • LevelCapGaming vs. PhlyDaily

Each of the YouTubers will pick one Annoholic to join the fight! For a chance to join one of the YouTube teams, you must do the following:

 

How to enter

 

  1. Play Anno 1800 and build the most impressive city possible –
    or share your most impressive Anno 1800 city if you already have one
  2. Take the most creative and cool looking picture of your built city
  3. Reply to the tweet of any of our YouTube stars with the picture of your city and their hashtag:
    • Oompaville – #Anno1800Oompa
    • MattShea – #Anno1800MattShea
    • BunnyFuFuu – #Anno1800Bunny
    • Professor Akali – #Anno1800Professor
    • BaronVonGames – #Anno1800Baron
    • Ohmwrecker – #Anno1800Ohm
    • LevelCapGaming – #Anno1800LevelCap
    • PhlyDaily – #Anno1800Phly

Deadline: All photos must be submitted before Saturday, July 13.

For more informations, please visit anno1800.gg. May your city be with you!

 

A lovestory to remember

There is a new newspaper journalist in town. Annoholic 紫水晶提督＠甲丙乙乙丙 (If google translate doesn’t lie to us, his name means “Amethyst Admiral”) was in the right place at the perfect time and managed to take pictures of this lovely couple. Maybe they are famous, hiding from the crowd? Maybe they are Romeo and Juliet who have lost their way and stranded at the beach? Who knows! You can find the whole series of screenshot in the original tweet right there.

 

Anno isn’t that unromantic after all!

 

The release of Game Update 4 is near!

Many of you awaiting eagerly the details on the first big DLC „Sunken Treasures“ as well as more information about the changes to come with the free Game Update 4.
With the recent release of Game Update 3.2, you won’t have to wait long as we will start as early as next week to tell you more about the upcoming content.

For the weeks to come, you can expect a new DevBlog: Sunken Treasures, another episode of our AnnoCast developer live-stream as well as update information about Game Update 4, and that all in July!

 

Union Update: Live Streams and City Promotion Winner

Posted on by Bastian Thun

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.

You can watch the recording of the AMA stream now here:
Community Corner AMA July

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.

First Place – Radlerauge – Utopia

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-lTyvYyMU4&feature=youtu.be

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

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VIpmCDwWCs&feature=youtu.be

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?

 

Union Update: July at our doorstep

Posted on by Bastian Thun

We are back with a short and fresh Community Update during a hot summer day, before we will return next week with the details to Game Update 3.2 and the winners of the propaganda video contest.

We had our German episode of our Community Corner AMA stream last Tuesday. As usual, many of you joined us to watch the stream and ask plenty of questions. We also shared some German entries to our propaganda contest and as we love to share any of your Anno 1800 creations. Is there a funny video or great fan art you stumbled across which you would like to share with us?
Quite recently, we were amused by Patteyayo Plays sarcastic tutorial for the fifths residential tier:

YouTube

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And if you missed the German stream, you can just watch the show in the video library of our Twitch channel.

Most of our fans don’t speak German though and for that reason, we will follow up with another episode of our Community Corner AMA stream next Wednesday at 4.30pm CEST.

Here a few information from our German Community Corner:
– We will release the exact details about Game Update 3.2 next week but you won’t have to wait long before Game Update 4.
– Game Update 4 will come with, among other things, some quality of life improvements to the trade routes. All of these changes will be based on community feedback and cover usability and functionality improvements.
– We also work on a proper UI and feature implementation to manage the minimum stock of your wares and goods.
– We also heard your feedback regards items relying too much on item random pools, which makes it hard for players to work towards a certain goal or end up in a grind if you work towards a specific strategy. We listened to that feedback closely and as a result, Sunken Treasures will come with a feature that allows you to work towards certain new items without relying on random item pools.
– There are currently no plans to work on natural disasters or scenarios for Anno 1800. Traditionally, only a small percentage of our player base engage with this type of content, which further costs us a lot of development time to create. We decided that we want to concentrate on content, which expands the world of Anno 1800 for a large part of our communities, even though we are personally a fan of scenarios.
– We know that you are all eager to get news about the statistic building, coop mode or the not yet revealed third free content drop. When it comes to multiplayer, we want to iron out a few remaining desynch issues before we can fully focus on the coop mode. Rest assured you get some details about our free content update soon.
– And while we talk about multiplayer, we created our own dedicated forum topic to gather your feedback about Anno 1800’s MP mode here.

While this was more an overview than a summary about the information we provided during the German stream, don’t hesitate to bring all the questions you can think of to the English AMA next Wednesday.

And before we leave you guys to hopefully enjoy a sunny and exciting day (it’s almost weekend, right?), we have a small teaser about stuff we are currently working on:

 

 

Union Update: Fansite Kit and State of the Game

Posted on by Bastian Thun

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.

Get the Anno Union fansite kit 1.0 right here.

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.

Union Update: Anarchist and City Promotion

Posted on by Bastian Thun

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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Watch Community Corner – Anarchist Preview and AMA from ubisoftbluebyte on www.twitch.tv

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.

Union Update: Anarchic News

Posted on by Ubi_MarcelH

Our last Union Update for May not only brings you all the information you could ask for regarding next week’s Game Update 3, but also news on our next live stream. Finally, the Anno 1800 team is looking for some new blood, so let’s get right to it!

 

As you saw when we announced our Season Pass, we have some big plans for Anno 1800. To realize all of them, we are currently looking for some reinforcements to join our industrial revolution. So if you have experience working in game development and would like to help us shape the future of Anno, you should definitely check out our career portal!

We currently have the following openings:

3D Engine Programmer

Tools Programmer

Gameplay Programmer

Senior Game Designer

Lead Narrative Designer

Senior QA Tester

 

And right before the content launches, we will have another Community Corner Live-Stream with our Community Developer Bastian.
Tun in next Tuesday June 4th to have a closer look on the the Anarchist’s island while Basti answers your questions about the DLC and other community hot topics.

Anno 1800 – Community Corner: The Anarchist
When: Tuesday June 4th at 5pm CEST / 11am EST / 8am PST / 3pm UTC
Where: https:// twitch.tv/ubisoftbluebyte

 

Union Update: Rumors of Anarchy (Updated)

Posted on by Ubi_MarcelH

Hello, and welcome to another short, but nevertheless important Union Update! This time we will cover the release of today’s Game Update 2, give you first information on GU 3, and also tease you about our next major content release, The Anarchist. What fun!

Game Update 2 is out now

By the time you are reading this, we will have already released our Game Update 2, which includes a broad variety of bug fixes and balance adjustments. You can find the full list of release notes for this 850mb update in last week’s Union Update.

Coming up next: Game Update 3

Of course, there is no rest for the wicked, so we are already hard at work on our next game Update. While it is too early to go into details on the many fixes we are planning to include, we wanted to give you a first glimpse of what you can look forward to:

 

  • Eli Bleakworth has been busy locking up criminals, giving you access to a wider variety of specialists you can acquire on his prison island
  • We have reworked the monument construction interface for the world fair
  • Get ready to go an expedition with the first community-submitted event from our previous Union contest and vote

This Game Update will be released alongside the coming release of The Anarchist. Which naturally brings us to…

Coming next week: Our DevBlog on the Anarchist

As previously announced, our first big content release after launch will be The Anarchist character, whom you can already secure today by buying the game’s Digital Deluxe or Pioneers Edition of the game (or via the Digital Deluxe Edition Upgrade). Next week, we are planning to give you much more insights into this unique new NPC opponent and content, and some of the major ways in which he will differ from our existing cast of characters. Without giving too much away, let us just say that you will want to keep a close eye on your own islands when competing with his charismatic demagogue. Never underestimate the dangers of anarchy…

Update: The Anno Union Company Logo is now available

You asked for it, so here it is: The much asked-about “Anno Union Emblem” company logo is now available for redemption from the Club Rewards section on Uplay. So go forth and represent the Union!