Gamescom Preview – Anno 1800
The new Anno which takes place in the 19th century comes with a lot of new things.
You can now have a Zoo and a museum which you can design yourself. Both can be build in a modular way and there’s also a blueprint mode in which you can build the whole thing without costs. When your done and happy with the result, you can build them and you are charged. There are several ways to get animals and objects for the two like trade. The main way are expeditions though.
Expeditions are events, that you can play and get rewards in form of objects, animals and specialists. The more difficult the expedition you choose, the bigger the rewards. On expeditions the player discovers foreign cultures but also needs to face sicknesses and sea battles. One expedition lasts over several in-game days and depending on the items and people you have on your ship and which decisions you make, there are different outcomes to the same expedition. The moral of your crew is also very important and you need to watch the bar to succeed.
Once you decided on an expedition, you need to make sure you take the right specialists and material with you. There’s only so much space so choose carefully. Then you’ll be on your way. Successful expeditions can give you new specialist and to take him/her with you might need to leave another behind, if your ship is full.
Visual feedback is important in the new Anno world and there’s a lot going on in your town. You can just sit back and watch. Sometimes, if you watch closely, there’s stories happening in your town. For example, a teacher might be seen scolding his pupils. Anno 1800 takes place in the industrial age and the whole century is being portrayed in the game. There are bridges going over rivers, farmers are needed for the grocery production and you can change aspects through the UI.
An important aspect of Anno 1800 is the city attractiveness then that’s the way to get tourists to your town which in turn gives you money. The attractiveness is calculated by island so it can be useful to use one island for your production and minimize the pollution for your citizen. Workers will be shipped from island to island by boat.
 press photo by Ubisoft |
 press photo by Ubisoft |
 press photo by Ubisoft |
 press photo byUbisoft |
The attractiveness is calculated by the following aspects:
- Cultur (Zoo, Museum)
- Nature (Number of greens and undeveloped areas)
- Instability (Riots)
- Unpleasantness (ex. number of ruins in your town)
- festivities
More aspects of Anno 1800
- Postcard mode will be back
- South America is a new world which you can explore. It has it’s own citizen levels and production chains.
- Change of weather (No day/night change)
- City incidents like fire, riots and other stuff which fits in the 19th century.
- World fair as build project.
- Classic multiplayer mode (no details yet)
Anno-Union
The Anno-Union has been very successful so far and will continue even after release. There will be further blog posts and player focus tests until then too.
Tip: If you want to test the game before it comes out, be active in the Anno-Union community.
Conclusion
Everything I’ve seen and hear about the game has me very much excited. There’s so much details and so many aspects to this game that I’m not able to talk about them all. The only thing that bothered me while playing was that there wasn’t a tutorial. You had to find your own way and in the beginning it was a bit unclear what you were supposed to do. Especially for new players this might be an issue. I hope they change that until the game comes out.
Release date and system requirements
The system requirements are supposed to be about the same as for Anno 2205, but no details yet.
The game will be released February 26th, 2019 for PC and there will also be a physical collectors edition (Pioneers Edition).
Further Reading
