Tag: Union Update

While some of us enjoy the snowy surprise and the resulting winter themed skin applied in many parts of Germany, we bring you another round of our Community questions and answers and streams for the cozy winter days.

With this week’s DevBlog: Ornaments, our blog series revolving the development of Anno 1800 returns from its winter hiatus. Next week, we will conquer the winter season with some heat: we hope that you look forward to city incidents such as firestorms, strikes and the season appropriate illness before we raise the curtain for the big feature reveal before our Closed Beta at the end of the month.

The next episode of our AnnoCast and Anno Afternoon
Save the date as our Twitch devstream will return next week Wednesday January 23rd. This time with Narrative Designer Marie who will demonstrate us how we applied some fresh paint to the quest system in Anno 1800. Nevertheless, that is not all as next week Friday, January 25th, Chris and John will be back with their aspiring Anno 2070 utopia.

Annocast: Quests and Expeditions – January 23th at 5pm MEZ
AnnoAfternoon – January 25th at 5pm MEZ

Watch it live on twitch.tv/ubisoftbluebyte – and follow our channel if you never want to miss a show!

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iyamaShiro
Will it be possible to change specific sound slider, such as voice, music and effects? I love to tune up the effects and dial down the rest of the game audio.
Answer: You will be able to change the following audio levels individually: Master Volume, Menu Sounds, Voice Volume, Music Volume and SFX Volume. Enjoy!

Ceib0
Will we only be able to exhibit artefacts in the museum or also art pieces such as statues or paintings?
Answer:Exhibits will mainly include cultural artefacts and sets will include statues. Bigger exhibits are displayed in open-air modules and come with their own unique asset while smaller artifacts will be showcased in museum wing modules. By the way: You will be able to place ornaments between your zoo and museum modules freely, which will allow you to create beautiful vistas with statues, fountains or other ornamental structures.

adriankowaty
Will there be a statistic overview like in 2205 which allows us to see how many units of a certain good we produce at a time?
Answer: We won’t have a statistic feature such as the one in Anno 2070 at launch of the game. But we are aware that many of you wish to see a comprehensive overview and statistics of your production, especially when reaching the end-game. We will keep continue to keep an eye on such feedback after the launch of the game.
The tooltip of each production building allows you to see how long it takes to finish one good and you will be further able to change the production speed with things like the working condition slider. If you compare the time it takes to create a good compared to the production time of the production of the needed resources, you can easily calculated the most effective rate of production and resource buildings.
Furthermore, you can check the overall amount of goods and if their stock is currently rising or declining in the kontor and warehouses.

g4mer901
Will it be possible to build sole production islands or will I need to create a new settlement with each island expansion?
Answer: Reaching the fourth residential tier unlocks a new building: the commuter harbor. This new building allows you to connect different islands, which also have a commuter harbor and once linked; islands will share their workforce as one global pool. This means that you will not need to create settlements to support your production islands. But beware: an economy which mainly relies on a commuter network is an easy target during war, as one well-directed blow to your commuter harbors can cripple your whole production pipeline.

prgbrowne
I have read reviews on Anno 1800 where one of the downsides is the small size of land masses to build your empire. Is that a valid concern? It probably would be nice to have the choice of the size of the land mass you get to colonise, much like Civilization I guess. I don’t really want to see small islands close together. Varied terrain type options would also be good.
Answer: Anno 1800 will not only have the biggest maps in the history of the series, but also islands with vastest construction space. In the custom game options, you will be able to change the type of island world (which affects the arrangement of islands, such as atolls and archipelagos) and how frequents large islands are on your map. As naval exploration was always an essential game pillar of the Anno series, we further expanded on the ocean space to give you more room for trading networks or open water battlefields for tense ship fights on the high sea.

denNes_
Is a return of the research planned for the game? I loved it in 2070 and 1701 and would like if it celebrates a comeback to the series.
Answer: We currently have no planes for a self-contained research feature in Anno 1800. We followed many community discussions revolving research closely and want to provide a few insides how Anno 1800 will cover that topic. In previous Anno titles, research served as an item generator and further allowed you to customize your playstyle with various perks and special abilities. Anno 1800 covers said options with several new features and as player freedom is important for us, we decided against a classic and often restricting “RTS” style research tree.
There are many different ways how to acquire items. In addition to quests or trading, you will be able to generate items with the new city attractiveness, the variety of expeditions or the world fair monument.
When on a zoological expedition, you will not only be able to acquire animals for your zoo, you can also get your hands on some cultural items or even hire specialists during events, which come with abilities which might not be related to the zoo at all. As an example, a specialist might join you who is able to boost one of your battleships with a special ability. If you want to focus on your fleet of warships, you can run naval themed exhibitions in your world fair or do bounty-hunt expeditions, which will reward you with naval related items such as weaponry or combat savvy specialists.
If you prefer to use the power of science to benefit your society, get marvelous new machines from the world fair, which you can slot in your guild houses to boost your factories with various effects.
Furthermore, you can make use of the influence system to get bonuses which suit your custom playstyle which are, in contrast to a research tree, are reversible at any time.
Add more elements such as electricity; Anno 1800 adds various layers, which allow you to optimize or to get experimental with your own unique playstyle.

Another gamescom is in the history books – and what an amazing show it has been for Anno 1800 and the team here at Ubisoft Blue Byte! With so much going on, let us recap all the things you may have missed and give you peak on upcoming content!

Anno 1800 releases February 26^th, 2019
Let’s start with the biggest news coming out of gamescom 2018: Anno 1800 will ship globally for Windows PC on February 26^th, 2019! To properly celebrate this news, we also had a new trailer that gave you a first glimpse of a new world to explore.

Pre-Orders for all our editions are now live
With the release date out in the open, many of you have been asking how and when you could be buying Anno 1800. And the answer to that is… you can pre-order it now, in up to three different editions (based on your location).

No matter if you just want the base game itself, are looking for some digital goodies, or you want a proper physical art book on your shelf, we have you covered. Regardless of which editions you are going for, your pre-order from participating retailers will earn you the Imperial Pack, including a statuesque throwback to Anno 1602, and exclusive alternate models for your command ship and train. Find the full edition breakdown here: https://www.anno-union.com/en/anno-1800-release-date-and-pre-order/

We won some awards!
gamescom started in the best possible way for Anno 1800, with an expert jury awarding us the prestigious “Best PC Game” award. As you can see, we were rather excited! And to cap it all off, Saturday saw Ubisoft win the fan-voted award for the best developer of the show. Thank you so much for your support and votes, we couldn’t be happier with the reception of our game!

Anno 1800 is great – but do not just take our word for it!
A large number of previews (both written and of the video variety) from influencers and press from around the globe have been hitting the web. So if you want to learn more about what we showed behind closed doors at our pre-gamescom events as well as the show itself, here’s your chance! Press were able to play up to three hours of the game, including most content of the first three citizen tiers. And they also got their hands on some all-new features, which brings me to…

The Anno 1800 booth, UbiLounge masterclass and stage presentations
But probably more exciting than anything else during the convention was our big Anno 1800 booth, where fans could get their hands on the game for the first time and take their own special gamescom memento with a 19^th century style photo.
Chris aka Ubi O5igther from the community team was also at gc2018 and we found some time for a relaxing foto session.
And the booth was packed – with queuing times starting immediately to ramp up as soon as the convention opened. Even with long waiting times, thousands were able to get their first impressions for the seventh Anno title in the series and we tried to get as much feedback as possible. If you visited us and played the game, feel free to share your take on the gamescom demo in the comments!

Playing the game was obviously a highlight but we had some more Anno cards up our sleeve.
On our big Ubisoft stage, we gave you a glimpse on our newly announced features such as the expeditions, the museum and blueprints. Hundreds of Anno fans gave us not only great company during the daily shows, even in that loud environment of a packed convention hall everyone could hear the “Anno Union” battlecry of the Anno fans (seriously I was surprised how loud you guys can get).
Love Island, our throwback to the story “mutiny on the bounty”, became quickly a running gag during the convention.

During our UbiLounge presentations, we not only gave you a live gameplay demonstration of the actual savegame shown to the press, you could also ask questions in the roughly 1 hour long panel – all in the spirit of the Anno Union. While we mentioned in advance that you should be early, you guys managed to pack the Ubilounge to its absolute max of sometimes 60 and more people attending each master class. Altogether, several hundred Anno fans watched, listened and asked questions during the presentations.
The Union community dinner
A very special highlight for us was the Union community dinner on Thursday evening, where we invited almost 30 Anno fans to come together to enjoy the company, the food and chatting about Anno 1800 and the Union. Even after the restaurant closed its doors, we all had a hard time to call it a day, so it went on until almost 1am. A truly brilliant Anno evening and we are thirsty for more, it might now have been the last time we host such an event?

We compeletly missed to get all attendees on one picture, must have been the nice atmosphere which distracted us. 

But how about the Anno Union members being unable to attend?
To give you a chance to see what we have shown to press and fans for yourself, we decided to will host an AnnoCast stream this Thursday, where we will not only recap the convention but also show you the actual gameshow build in action, including the content we have shown to the press and to fans in the UbiLounge. Last week, we asked you for questions and as this Union Update is already quite long, we decided to answer many of them in this Thursday’s stream.

You also remember that we talked about some nice Anno 1800 goodies during gamescom? To give you a chance to get your hands on the Anno 1800 gamescom loot, we will raffle out several of the pieces during the show, including also some nice giveaways from our friends at Corsair Gaming.
Let us come together this Thursday at 4.30pm CEST for our post gamescom stream at twitch.tv/ubisoftbluebyte

What’s to come in September and beyond
With gamescom 2018 behind us, there is a lot to talk about. In the upcoming weeks, we will dive into detail about the new world, expeditions and the museum and we start with putting the second session under the looking glass next week. We know that you have a lot of questions and we will make sure that the DevBlogs tackling the new features will answer many of them:
In upcoming Union updates, we will start to kick off a new fan initiative and present you the finalists of the Union ship vote.
But rest is for the wicked and there is still a lot to talk about up to February 2019. With a big Naval combat highlight in the making, more frequent streams, the next round of our Union focus test and even some not yet revealed features – there is a lot of things to look forward to so keep a close eye on Union Updates and Devblogs to come.