Union Update: Modder Spotlight – Hier0nimus

Hey Anno Community,

Last week we showcased Taludas’ “New Frontiers” mod for Anno 2205 which adds a whole bunch of new features and content for the game – including Mars as an entirely new region!

Today, we’re returning to Anno 1800 with a full spotlight on Hier0nimus who you might know from mods like the “Perfect Specialist & Items Pack” or “Music to my Ears” (a winner of last year’s mod contest!).

Hey Hier0nimus, thank you for taking the time! Before we’re diving into your different projects, how did you actually get into the modding scene for Anno 1800?

I think the trigger to get into modding came from a reference on the normal Anno Discord server. I was interested in the Anno community and what the community made for the game: tools to help with making the best layout for your city, a wiki where you could find a lot of information about the game, etc. One of those things that caught my attention was mods.

When I saw the link to the Modding discord in the list of resources, I was triggered and joined that server to find a warm community of people really open and helpful for people who wanted to start modding themselves. Via that server I found a website by Schwubbe with a lot of information that helps beginning modders. That was the starting point for me and the trigger to try out some things myself.

What kind of mods have you worked on so far?

The first mod I started with and that got me into modding was a specialist item mod. I’m a player in Anno 1800 that likes to lose himself in optimizing productions with specialists and items. Specialists are the perfect first thing to learn how to make a mod when you understand the basics of the modding in Anno 1800.

I spent hours and hours with a spreadsheet coming up with names, descriptions, lore and the actual use for all those specialists before even doing any coding or making graphics. The first version was released in November 2021, months after I started to understand the modding process and contained about 50 new specialists for the regions that were available at that time. The mod that was the start of my modding journey now contains 125 specialists and items and still has a special place in my heart.

After I created the specialists mod I wanted to take the next step in my modding journey and create a new production chain with new products. It was around Christmas 2021, and I decided to make a Christmas tree production chain. To this date, this mod still exists. For me, personally, it is not a big mod but it was a mod that was a step in my learning experience and one of the many steps I needed to make to learn new things.

After that Christmas mod, I discovered another drive inside me, which was writing tutorials and helping people who wanted to walk the same path I walked and get into modding. I found a lot of joy in helping people with the basic knowledge I myself learned from others and smacking my face to the ground multiple times. I took up the goal to help people in their modding journey and found it really enjoyable to see people grow and make amazing things.

In 2023, the Anno team announced a modding contest with prizes that triggered my attention. I started way too late and only one week before the contest ended, I started creating the first assets. I had an idea lying around for a while to add musical instruments to the game, but it had to have some extras, so I added the Music Hall as a building to buff surrounding residences. Which is also not the craziest, but it adds some extra flavor.

During the development of that mod, I again had way too many ideas but because of the limited time, I had to make some hard choices. It would have been nice to have the music hall be a monument and to add new music to the game as well. But those would have been things I totally did not know anything about and with only a week totally not realistic. Crunching that week to get my mod out was a really enjoyable period with again the community helping out where I got stuck or giving me ideas or improvements. In my opinion every mod I created is in some way an achievement of the whole community and not only of myself. And then the contest was over, and I was one of the winners! Hurray! A big thank you again to the Anno team for organizing this amazing event and the whole Modding community for participating and helping out!

Did you have any prior modding knowledge or specific skills (programming, 3D art, …) when starting to mod Anno?

Playing a game for me has always been a way of expressing myself. I like to play games that build / create stuff where you accomplish something towards a goal. It is a part of me and how I’m wired. Anno in that way is the perfect game for that and modding ties so well into that. Modding gives me the power to feel more connected with the game I love. When having certain skills that help build something, like creating graphics, writing code it makes it easier to feel that connection. I have a background in Web Design, graphic design and frontend development which gave me the advantage of finding that extra connection with a game a bit easier. It even gave me the ability to spread the enthusiasm for modding faster when helping people.

What would you advise someone who wanted to get into modding Anno?

Take your time, do not put pressure on yourself, read the documentation, start small, dive in face first, smack your face into a wall and make mistakes, learn, grow, ask questions and most importantly: enjoy the ride.

Join the modding discord and be part of the community of people that help eachother grow.

Take on small projects and do it step by step. Eventually, you will combine everything you learned into a big mod when you are ready for it.

You are about to release the “Military Attention” mod. Can you give us an overview of this mod, its goals and what inspired you to create it?

Military Attention is a mod that has a size I could not even think about when I started modding. Military Attention contains new soldier population tiers for every region, new military products, additional requirements of building ships, new monument, ornaments, etc. Way too much to put a list here.

The idea is to add an extra military aspect to the game. Originally, I would have added a lot more changes to AI, new ships, etc. but during the past years a lot of other modders already added so many military things that I skipped a lot of those. I would rather be compatible with them and be a piece of the Military puzzle and make a complete puzzle together with those other mods.

So, I focus on the logistics part of the military. If you want to have a more challenging AI or more ships, there are so many other mods already that have even done a better job than what I could probably would ever have done. At the moment I released it as a BETA to give people the opportunity to test it out, find bugs, check compatibility with mods I would maybe never use but I want to be compatible with, etc. A lot of feedback was already given which I really appreciate! Big thank you to everyone! I hope to release it as soon as possible. At the moment I’m polishing the last steps so it should be ready before the summer! After that I will probably dive back into the Arctic mod again!

Are there any other mod projects you’re currently working on and that you already want to tease?

Again during those last years I worked on a lot of things, but 2 bigger things are still the two things ranked 1 and 2 (sometimes pushed to 2 and 3). Years ago, I started to work on an Arctic mod. We all want the Arctic to get some extra love. I created new population tiers, new buildings, new production chains, new mechanics, ect. It is looking so good already. It even will have new skinned islands and already has a new Arctic session!

Then a topic came up on the modding discord about soldiers in Anno 1800. I was triggered by it. That is now the mod I put my full attention to (well, most of the time until I got sidetracked by something like almost 100 Hot Air Balloons, helping people, writing tutorials,…).

That’s it for today’s modder spotlight – thank you once more, Hier0nimus for taking the time to give us insights into your modding journey!

Everyone else: Check out Hier0nimus‘ mods on mod.io or search for his mods directly in the ingame mod browser.