Tag: Union Update

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:

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:

 

 

We are back with a short update from the development front, the winners of our #annophony contest and a new episode of our AnnoAfternoon community show.

Many of you have heard it already: thanks to your relentless support is Anno 1800 the fastest selling game in the franchise’s history! And to celebrate that milestone, we decided to honor your first week achievements in a special way:

Improvements and future updates for Anno 1800
We entered week three after the big maiden voyage and we are busy bees here in our studio in Mainz. The game had an incredible start thanks to our communities out there and our current main objective is to finish the second patch for Anno 1800.
And since launch of the game, we browsed through an incredible amount of discussions and reports from our own forums as well as community platforms out there. Backed up by our own game analytics, we got together a lot of valuable data which helps us to improve Anno 1800 step by step.

But Anno is a true giant when it comes to the amount of features and simulations running in the back ground. And because of that, any changes to the game (if it is a QoL improvement or a bugfix) have to be validated to make sure that not one fix does not result in a new although different issue to appear.
But we got together a handy checklist for the second patch which we will share with you, together with an ETA
for the next patch, next week.

And if you are curious about upcoming content, Dr. Hugo Mercier will soon appear on the big Anno stage and we will reveal his background but also interesting gameplay twists in a future DevBlog.
We can already tell that the Anarchist is not only a visionary; he has quite unconventional tools to force his ideas onto his people.
We know that you are also curious when the first free content updates in form of the statistic building and the coop mode will go live. We have to ask you for a bit more patience here, as we think that balancing, improvements and bugfixes have the highest priority right now. As always, we will give keep you in the loop as soon as we have news to share.

Anno Afternoon May 3. at 3pm UTC
How about a trip back to Waffletown, the peaceful village John and Guddy created during our AnnoAfternoon community stream! How did the residents fare in the last few weeks of stream abstinence? Is there still enough schnapps or has everything exploded in the meantime? Find out in the next Anno Afternoon and help us to get everything back on track!
Tune in this Friday, May 3^rd at 3pm UTC on: https://www.twitch.tv/ubisoftbluebyte

Annophonics and other community creations
We asked you to create a love letter to the Anno series and today, we are happy to announce the winners of our #annophony contest! And so much love went into your submissions of the contest that we cannot wat to channel your creative energy in future contests.

And the winner of the first place is: HolyDaDeViL’s very special Anno Sanctum

True craftsmanship and passion came together to create something truly special: a marvelous Anno 1800 sanctum. We seriously have to re-think our decorations in our streaming room after seeing this one! Congratulations for the first place, we will get in contact with you via forum DM to send the vinyl soundtrack on its way to you.

And without further ado, the second place goes to: Lord_Janok and one day in the life of an Annoholic!

This one made us chuckle many times but beside the great humor, the video is a true display of dedication and passion of fans who follow our series for two decades now.
We will also get in contact with you via forum DM so that you soon can call the signed Anno 1800 t-shirt your own!

As we are already working on new concepts for future contests, what are the Unions idea for small and big creative or other competitions?

Help and tips from Crinricts Gaming World
You say that this gaming and support blog is a staple in many gaming communities for years now. Thankfully, Crinrict seems to have found a liking in the 19. Century flair and we are happy to see that the first Anno 1800 help articles found a new home in Crinrict’s Gaming World.

And for today’s Union Header, grabbed a moment captured in a wonderful angle by by user @We3kend

Until next time!

It was all the way back at gamescom 2017 when we announced Anno’s steam fueled step into the industrial revolution. 15.000 comments later, we can say that we have not only created the biggest Anno game to date, but also that all of this was made possible thanks to the collaboration with and the unwavering support of our Union members. 

Today, we are happy to announce that Anno 1800 is leaving its harbor here in the Ubisoft Blue Byte Mainz office for its grand maiden voyage, ready to bring its proud heritage of 21 years of city building and exploration to players around the world.

We also want to send a big, heartfelt “thank you” from the whole development team to all Anno players and Anno Union supporters out there. This journey has been something truly special and the result is a game made with an incredible amount of passion by old veterans, new talents and our dearest fans alike.

Join our AnnoCast Launch Party
To celebrate the big launch of Anno 1800, we want to invite every one of you to celebrate with us in a live stream, which will happen tomorrow at 1pm UTC.
We will host the AnnoCast Launch Party where we will go on a serious trip down memory lane, eat cake, raffle out Anno swag aplenty and chat with you about the development or maybe even turn the tables once and comment on other streamer’s playstyle.
This stream is dedicated to you, our loyal fans, who made the game possible in the first place: April 16 1pm UTC at twitch.tv/ubisoftbluebyte
Our first taste of our upcoming fan site kit
We have been talking for a while about our fan site kit, but so far kept you waiting. That wait is finally ending, as the first version of the fan site kit is now available (though we will add more stuff to it over time).

For now, you can grab a customized Anno 1800 streaming layout, as well as the first wallpaper and a variety of social media assets here: Anno Union Fansite Kit Preview

Release times and day one time
As a reminder, below are the global release times of Anno 1800. While Annoholics in Asia and Oceania have already set their sails, other regions of the globe will get to join them over the coming day. Should you find yourself craving some Anno-tainment in these last hours of waiting, you can already pop over to twitch and YouTube to see more of the game, or read up on the first reviews that came out today.

Keep in mind that the below world map only applies to unlock times for Uplay. Timings on the Epic Games store and Steam vary, as we are reliant on our partners for these launches on their platforms.

We also want to remind owners of the physical copy of the game that there will be a 23GB download for our Day 1 Patch, as we have been busy further improving the game since we started producing the game discs a few weeks back.

In the spirit of reminiscing on 1 ½ years of the Anno Union, we would love to hear your stories about your favorite memories and moments from this exciting time.

Today we are short on text, but have lots of videos to entertain you in-between those lengthy Open Beta sessions this weekend. But first- your chance to win something!

Show us your love for Anno and win a vinyl soundtrack
As announced during yesterday’s AnnoCast twitch stream, we are giving away one of the limited Anno 1800 Vinyl Soundtracks from our friends at Blackscreen Records (which we will happily sign if requested by the winner). We also have one runner-up prize, which is a signed Anno 1800 t-shirt. To claim this piece of Anno history for yourself, you have to get creative, and perhaps even a bit crazy. In short: We want you to show us your love for the Anno series. The more inventive, the better! Whether you create a music video or record an audio play, we want to see you express your creativity as it relates to Anno.

Show us your creations in this forum thread here, and make sure to use the hastag #Annophony if you want to share them with the world on twitter. You can submit your content until 11:59pm UTC on Friday April 26.

Enjoy our Accolades trailer
With only 4 more days to go until the big day, we have released a new trailer for you all to enjoy, including some of the accolades Anno 1800 has received from press so far.

 

Anno 1800 Influencer Challenge
Our colleagues at Ubisoft US have challenged four popular strategy gaming influencers to see which one of them would make the best 19th century island governor.

For challenge number one, they had to compete to see who could reach 5.000 citizens first. Fair to say that their the approaches (and ethical standards of living) they settled on to reach this goal differed a lot between our contestants…

Alex the Rambler

Blitz

Draegast

Drew Durnil

We hope that our contestants provided you with some inspirations for our own Anno 1800 adventures! Check back next week for part two of the challenge, as they race to be the first player to reach the New World!

Reminder: Play the Open Beta to claim your ornament

Don’t forget to play the Anno 1800 Open beta this weekend to claim your chess table ornament for the full version. The Open Beta is available to everyone via Uplay and the Epic Games store.