I love these spotlight DevBlogs! They are a source of inspiration 🙂
Well I actually do have a couple of questions on some “development insights”, didn’t make it in time for the reddit AMA…
I’m a wiki editor, along with ordinary stuff I like to investigate the “mathematical part” of Anno, and find out formulas hidden behind the interface. Recently I found out how attractiveness from ornaments, happiness from pollution, happiness from working conditions are calculated, and it was almost as fun as playing the game!

Since a few months I am struggling on a couple of mechanics I can’t fully explain. I have experienced the same island’s cost oscillating of +/- 1 influence, so I assume there is a hidden value, like [sum of all your owned islands’ tiles] and that each island’s influence cost is a decimal number rounded at thousandths. So, even though influence cost of islands is fixed, depending on how close to the next thousands is your tile count, the cost for acquiring another island could differ of +/- 1 influence. Is that correct?
Basing on my tests, influence price takes into account “unbuildable” tiles like rivers and/or mountain deposits, because my Crown Falls always costs 103 influence even though I see 98573 tiles (counting sea tiles and space occupied by clay pits/oil wells, ignoring 25 mountain deposits which are probably taken into account?). From my tests it looks like the tile count for influence cost includes “unbuildable” parts of island such as rivers and slopes, but since I can’t count those tiles I can’t be 100% sure about that.

TL:DR I was wondering if you could address me on where to retrieve this information: island size (counting unbuildable tiles) and/or exact influence price for each island. Me and other more experienced players have digged into assets with no success 🙁

Second and last question (thanks for your patience!) Countryside Attractiveness. I have a code from assets which speaks about “AttractivenessNatureBaseMin”, “AttractivenessNaturePerTile” and “AttractivenessNatureMinPercent”. From my tests it seems that not only the amount of used tiles but also the way they are placed affects attractiveness: I got different values of attractiveness for the same amount of quay tiles placed in a whole block or single 1×1 quays scattered around. Perhaps this is an unintended behaviour, or not? If that’s how it works I doubt there is a “simple” formula, but anyways, is there a way you could help me to find out how that Countryside value is calculated?

If these questions are too specific please ignore them, although I would be immensely happy if these mechanics could be more clear: not gonna lie, that would serve wiki purposes as much as my personal satisfaction! I have so much fun understanding how the game works, I think this videogame is the perfect combination between art science.

Thank you in any case, for everything you do! I will keep supporting Anno as long as I can 🙂