- Anno 1800
- Union Update
Union Update: July at our doorstep
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:
Set Cookies
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:
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Very nice to see that the trade routes will be reworked. Judging form the list of planned improvements it really seems like you guys are listening to the feedback on the forums. Can’t wait to see new content come into the game. Keep up the good work!
“Anno 1800 will go back to the roots of older Anno titles such as 1404, where the second party AI (the characters settling and building on islands) follows largely the same rules as the player. Hidden under the hood of the so-called construction AI system are algorithms, which mimic the behavior of a player. Similarly to the player, your AI neighbor will need to generate money from taxes, produce resources to construct buildings and to fulfill the needs of the population to make them happy or to advance into the next tier. The number one rule when working on the AI system is that your friendly, aggressive or even quirky AI controlled players should behave like, and follow the same rules as, the player.”
This is from YOUR devblog, dammit! Here: http://anno-union.com/en/turing-tested-asimov-proofed/
YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE! THE AI DOES NOT PLAY BY THESE RULES AND YET YOU WONT ACKNOWLEDGE THIS!
And in the same wake, we explained that there are several systems which the AI cannot take advantage off, such as expeditions and to make them functional, you have to rebalance certain aspects of the game for them. AI does rely on production chains and with that, to generate construction resources etc.
Btw. Captain Capslock might be a good old friend but won’t help you with that. We know that, like with any other Anno game, players would love to see AI exactly behaving and following the same rule as players. But AI controlled characters, from their way their behavior relies on a lot of scripts, will never work exactly like a player. That is just the nature of things, you cannot just apply the same game rules as a player to AI and it “works”. However, with Anno 1800 we improved various elements of the AI greatly as we always try to not only iterate but also improve on game elements with every new entry in the series.
I understand that the AI cant function as well as a human player. That’s not the issue, and never was. My issue is the fact that this devblog said, “Similarly to the player, your AI neighbor will need to generate money from taxes, produce resources to construct buildings and to fulfill the needs of the population to make them happy or to advance into the next tier.”
I’m sorry, but when your AI is capable of settling a small island, and being to the third population tier without half of the required food chains (alone) in place, it really just ticks me off to read that devblog.
“It won’t make us money so we won’t make this feature yet”
Still not active pause.Still regreting buying the game
Same here. I want make another playthrough after campaign but hold myself until I see pause in the game.
When I play campaign I had a big problem, all three AI’s already have 5 tier in the city when I only reach 3 tier because I spent too much time on planning and reading texts.
Pause is absolutely needed to balance AI and human development speed, I suppose AI don’t waste time on reading texts.
Not pleased to read this. Firstly, it seems coop is a long way off, while this game is quite challanging and a lot of players have expressed just waiting for a more managable coop till they play the game again.
Secondly, you mention people don’t engage in scenarios, but very many people have expressed not knowing what to do with sandbox (i.e. setting their own goals, tweaking the world). The classic scenarios in 1404 gave a set goal, with set rules and AI. This kind of scenario should not be hard to make; pop a seed and make the game rules. That’s it really.
I hope the feedback you do take from the community will be implemented well.
I agree with you about the co-op mode. I’m really looking forward to it, I guess just like many other players do.
But if making scenario’s is so easy, as you say, why don’t you just create your own scenario’s in sandbox mode? Like set your own goal/circumstances and then set your own rules, as it’s already possible. The only difference is: the story told within a ‘real’ scenario from the development…
Like in 1404 there was a scenario: few fertilities and small islands. So the challenge was: ‘Logistics’. Just set the islands small and the fertilities low, and voilá: there’s your own scenario 🙂
I don’t mind not getting the scenarios. It’s more that I see people no knowing what to do and not setting goals for themselves. If you provide a few scenarios as I described, in ascending difficulty, people will choose that if they don’t have an idea. The new scenarios from 1404 Venice were amazing, I would really love to get some of those. But I’m assuming they’re talking about people playing that type of scenarios is just a few percent, and they take more time to make. So I’m assuming we’re not getting those anytime soon. Real sad for me, those and hunting achievements (another point that I find they implemented very very poorly, considering how well it was done in 1404), are the best part after you learn the game and played through a few sandbox games.
Yeah, I agree with that.
I’m missing the large quests, like the quests in different stages, plus the more you’ve grown up, the harder the quests will be.
Right now I’m holding 20.000 investors over 60.000 people, and everything functions like a well oiled machine. And I don’t know what to do now.
I don’t want to start over and over, for me it will be nice to have bigger quests and objectives..
Enjoy the weekend!
and again I’m totally agree with “DeVeteran” and I keep saying that it is not nice of you guys to ignore this!
Are the seeds going to be turned back as they were?
Again and again I will keep asking, seeing you haven’t even acknowledged it in your writing…
WIth the new DLC you put some new challenges / achievements and 3 new rewards in the Uplay Club. Fair.
What is NOT fair is that the rewards cost Uplay club points / units, in addition to you OWNING the DLC Anarchist, but more so, the cost is HIGHER than the points we get from the new challenges.
Case in point: The new challenges give 5, 5, 5, 15 and 20 units. So that is 50. BUT, the 3 new rewards cost: 40 for the portrait, and 20 for each of the two new ornaments, iirc, so in total 80. There is a BIG difference there. Why?
At least up the rewards of the challenges to 10, 10, 20, 20 and 20 units. Or decrease the cost of the Uplay rewards of the DLC / grant them free to those owning the DLC and reimburse the players.
It is wrong to charge twice for something… owning the DLC and then also paying Uplay points. At least make it so you can buy it with points if you don’t own the DLC, but if you have it, they are free.
So my question is this: Will something about this be done? About the rewards costing more than what the challenges give us? Or you are saying that we shouldn’t be able to unlock everything for this game?